Guilt

"Guilt should lead you to the Cross but shouldn't follow you after it." -Matt Peek
This is one of my all-time favorite quotes.
Guilt leading to repentance is God-sent. Guilt leading to enslavement is straight from the devil.
While sin should never be taken lightly, we cannot compensate for our sin by making ourselves miserable. I don't know about you, but I find myself doing this all of the time.
I sinned SO...
I'll pray for an extra thirty minutes.
I'll dwell on it and be miserable all day.
I can't serve God.
I can't be His child.
I can't join a church.
I'm not as "good" of a Christian as they are. (No-one is righteous, not even one. Psalm 14:2-3)
I deserved all the bad that happened to me.
And the list goes on and on...
We punish ourselves for our sin and promise God that we will try harder next time. All the while He is whispering to us: "My grace is sufficient. Why work for what I have already, freely given you? I did the work. It is finished."
But we are fools who keep working for something that is already ours.
We are fools who choose to stay in prison when we have been set free.
We choose enslavement and bondage over freedom, everyday.
Like I said, I am not encouraging us to take sin lightly. We are dishonoring and disregarding a Holy Sovereign God, the Creator of all things... which is not something to be brushed over.
What I am saying, is that even at our darkest hour, in the midst of our greatest regret, God is teaching us something. We cannot allow ourselves to miss the lesson because we are too focused on the shame, guilt, and regret. These distractions are the devil in disguise! He is a prowling lion, waiting to devour us all. He attacks us at our weaker moments. Counteract his attempts by letting the strength of Christ shine through your weaknesses. Satan will crumble in the light. He can't stand it.
We can't let Satan fool us into living by our feelings. In Jeremiah, God says our "heart is deceitful and desperately sick, who can understand it?"(Jer. 17:9).
Live by God's truth, instead. His grace is greater than your feelings of guilt and unworthiness.
In your valley of death, fear no evil! Because Christ is with you! (Psalm 23)
Something I'm coming to really know in my heart, instead of just know in my head, is that Christ is for me. And He is for you. Christ is offering us a feast and He watches in dismay as we settle for leftovers thrown away in a garbage can. He has so much to offer us and seeing us settle for lesser created things breaks His heart. He disciplines us out of love because He wants the absolute best for us with no exceptions. He is waiting expectantly for us to turn around and say: "Father, I'm coming Home!"
He will break us if that's what it takes to bring us back to Himself.
He can use our sin and the consequences of our actions as stepping stones allowing us to walk back to where we belong, in His arms.
But we have to let Him.
So next time you feel broken and defeated by your sin, take it to the Cross and leave it there.
Pursue Godliness, not perfection. (As my mom puts it.)
Let the blood of Jesus make you clean and whole. Wallowing in our shame will only enslave us and prevent us from being all that Christ has called us to be. We can't let Satan win this battle.
We must never forget that God is working in the chaos. In Romans 8:28 when the Lord says He works ALL things together for our good, He means what He says. ALL THINGS. Even our mess-ups and shouldn't-haves. God uses our mishaps to teach us and mold us into an image more like himself.
We must strive to keep our focus on the lesson God is teaching us through what may seem to be our greatest downfall. Because what we see as our downfall, Christ sees as an opportunity to teach and mature our faith.
I'll leave us with something one of my all-time heroes (Janet Hammock) once told me: "When you mess up...you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start over."
Amen!

Romans 8:28: We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, those who are called according to His purpose.

Hebrews 12:11: No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the fruit of peace and righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
(I encourage you to go and read verses 3-12 for context and just a bigger picture, it's really good!)

1 John 3:18-20: Little children, we must not love in word or speech, but in deed and truth; that is how we will know we are of the truth, and will convince our hearts in His presence, because if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things.