Guilt

May 3, 2007
What is guilt? Is it just the feeling that we get when we tell a lie or is it something more? Do we let guilt control us because of something that we did before? We shouldn’t but some of us do. We let our guilt control us because of our past mistakes, we remember the bad and forget the good. We keep everything bottled up because we are afraid of what people will think of our mistakes that we already feel guilty for and they just make us feel worse, when really we need to admit our sins. Guilt consumes and takes control of some people lives. I know this from experience, I let my guilt from past mistakes control my choices. I fear making the same mistake twice. We can’t help it though, its human nature, we know that we are going to sin until we die. But I also let guilt take advantage of me. I feel bad for things that I never did, I do this just to avoid confrontation with people. I think if I take the blame for everything it will be all better and just go away. But thats never true. It always ends up being a bigger issue for me.
But where does guilt come from? Does it come from inside us or God? I think it comes from us and God. We know that whatever we did was against God and it makes God sad. When we sin thats what that feeling is, its us knowing what we did was directly against God and we know it. When we do something we don’t know is wrong we don’t feel anything until we get caught. So guilt isn’t just doing something wrong, it’s doing it and knowing we did wrong. That’s why choices we made haunt us until we ask for forgiveness. But we still chose to hold on to them to protect ourselves. But our guilt builds up and we can’t take too much. But we need to realize that holding on to things won’t protect us from the world, it only causes us more pain reliving those bad choices. We need to understand that God will protect us from getting hurt if we give it to Him. But until then we just will have a lot of pain and bad memories built up inside of us waiting to explode. Our guilt will overwhelm us it says so in the Bible. If we gave all our guilt to God we would avoid all this. The Bible says that only God can take our guilt away. Thats the only way! We can’t just sit there and wait for it to magically disappear. Until we give everything to Him, we will feel guilty. But if we never do, we will become desensitized and not feel anything at all. We won’t feel guilt, love, happiness, peace or God’s spirit. Nothing. Without that we’ll just be another person on this earth taking up space. So we know what to do to not feel guilty, now we need to go do it.