In the first blog, we talked about confession of our sin, shame and guilt. 1 John 1:10 says that if we say we have no sin in our lives, then we are a liar and make God out to be a liar too. Too often, people will feel a vague sense of guilt for their past, but refuse to deal with it directly. They would rather believe they have done nothing wrong, actually, the victim of the sins of others. Their focus is on their pain, suffering, their trauma, and seeking divine retribution on the one or ones that have hurt them. We all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. I think that is in the Bible somewhere (Romans 3:23).
After we confess our sins to God, there is still one more thing to do: Give God our guilt and shame and let Him help us deal with it. How do you do that? One big reason we have such a difficult time is that Satan wants to keep us down and under the burden of guilt and shame. Guilt is the heaviness of soul that comes with doing something wrong. Shame is thinking that you do bad things because YOU are bad. Jesus wants to set us free from both of these things.
Keith Miller treats his defects like a poinsonous snake and puts them in a bag and places them on a mental conveyor belt back to God. He does this as often as necessary and notes, “If you take the defect out of the sack and starty trying to deal with it in your mind, it will win almost every time.” After days, weeks, or years, some of them are gone, and others hardly ever show up. God has been at work. He will take these tenacious burdens only when we are entirely ready to let Him do so.
Are you ready to be free?