PROGRAM W-1711 – Part I

I have to tell you that guilt is not one of my favorite words! My life has been hounded with guilt. Why?

  • Because of my past.
  • Because many people think I’m nicer than I really am.
  • Because I don’t live up to my own expectations.
  • Because I automatically accept blame.
  • Because I’m not the perfect mother—or wife, or sister, or friend.
  • Because I don’t consistently practice all that I preach.
  • Because women are easy targets for guilt.

 

How long a list would you like? I’m certain you could add your own unique sources of guilt to mine. In fact, a few of my girlfriends shared some of their guilts with me:

  • “I have felt guilty for many years about working when my oldest daughter was young. I’ve not felt as close to her as I do to my other kids, and I’ve always blamed myself for not staying home with her when she was young.”
  • “I have felt guilty about not spending enough time playing, reading to, and simply having fun with my kids.”
  • “My mom always felt guilty because my younger brother didn’t have a younger sibling. Could she help that? Her doctor said no more. And yet she carried a lot of guilt.”
  • “In my life I’ve felt guilty about divorce—let me just go ahead and put the big one up there—the one that makes me feel like I have a neon sign on my forehead flashing ‘Failure.’”
  • “I tend to feel guilty about the time we spend with my husband’s mom. We go every other weekend and it is getting harder to go. His brother and sister put us (me) on a guilt trip, thinking we should do more.”
  • “Recently I was eating my hamburger and fries on my lunch break at McDonald’s (and feeling a little guilty that I had strayed from my diet) when a homeless man came up to my table and begged me to buy him a burger, just as I was taking a big bite out of mine. I felt bad for him, but at the same time I felt that I should not be interrupted this way. The restaurant should not allow a homeless person to disturb me while eating. Besides, if I helped every homeless person that approached me, I would go broke. Well, after I left the restaurant, I felt guilty that I didn’t buy the man a lunch. That’s my guilt trip for the day.”

 

This is just a small sample of the lists of guilts coming from my good friends. There are few days in our lives that are guilt-free. For far too many of us, our days are filled with guilt.

Living with Guilt

A life burdened under a load of guilt is not the abundant life that Jesus came to give us. Guilt steals our joy, hinders our productivity, interrupts our peace, harms our relationships and, worst of all, makes us self-focused.

Many of us let guilt creep into our lives until it becomes part of the fabric of our personalities. How many of us say “I’m sorry” as an automatic response, assuming guilt without any reason?

Little wonder that the enemy of our souls, Satan himself, wields this weapon of guilt so broadly and with such effectiveness. He has long recognized how easily we put up with guilt and how difficult it is for us to dump it. He knows that if he can keep us guilt-ridden, he can keep us from realizing God’s potential for our lives.

What is guilt?

Guilt is both a fact and a feeling. It is possible to be guilty without feeling guilty. It is possible to feel guilty without being guilty. Obviously, it is possible to be guilty and feel guilty. No doubt you have experienced all of these three conditions.

Feeling guilty even when we are not guilty is a more common struggle for most of us. This false guilt is caused by wrong thinking. We ignore the facts, we wallow in self-recrimination, and we send ourselves into a downward spiral of despair and discouragement without justification. That’s because this false guilt is a feeling, not a reality.

Feeling guilty when we are guilty is a good thing! Hopefully, that true guilt will cause us to repent and make needed changes.

Living Guilt-Free

If you are a Christian, it is not God’s will for you to live in guilt. Galatians 5:1 says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” To live with a constant feeling of guilt is to live with a yoke of slavery. It is to allow the feelings of guilt to choke the very life out of you. And Jesus came to set you free from this yoke!

I’ve come to the conclusion that living totally guilt-free is a nice cliché, but rarely achievable for any length of time. In fact, I’d be suspicious of anyone who tried to convince me they lived a guilt-free life. I might wonder if they’re in denial, or simply refusing to face reality.

What I do firmly believe is that we can live free from the constant plague of guilt. We can learn to recognize and manage our feelings of guilt, and we can get better and better at dealing with them. As one friend put it, “Guilt is sort of like mold on cheese. If it’s not dealt with, the mold creeps, takes over, and renders the entire cheese unusable, worthless, and disgusting. You have to cut the mold off as soon as you see it and throw it away to get back to the good stuff.”

I am convinced that through the power of God’s Spirit within us as believers in Jesus Christ, we can learn to effectively and quickly cut off the mold of guilt before it overtakes us. We must learn to recognize Satan’s strategy and stand firm against it. It’s time we discover that guilt is not meant to be part of our everyday living; it is not normal; it is not okay; it is not inevitable.

As one who has struggled through lots of guilt in my own life and allowed it to keep me down for far too long, I want to share with you some biblical principles and truths that have begun to set me free. I say, “begun to set me free,” because this is a lifelong lesson and pursuit. I am beginning to learn how to manage and deal with those feelings of guilt, and am discovering the incredible joy that brings. More than that, it sets me free to worship God more fully and to know him more deeply. It sets me free from self-absorption, and allows me to focus on serving others.

False guilt can be defined as the following:

  • What we feel when we keep remembering what God has forgiven and forgotten!
  • What we feel when someone appears to be disappointed in us.
  • What we feel when we have to say “no.”
  • What we feel when we try to please people and fail.
  • What we feel when we live with unrealistic expectations of ourselves.
  • What we feel when we allow others to dictate what and whom we should be.

 

Notice that each one begins with “what we feel.” It’s a feeling not grounded in truth, but nonetheless strong and real. Guilty feelings are very similar, whether they are true or false, and our challenge is to learn to discern the difference. We must learn to quickly analyze any guilt that comes our way: Is this true or false guilt? Have I done something that I can specifically identify for which I deserve blame? Or is this just that nebulous feeling of guilt I seem to get whenever I feel someone is unhappy with me, I can’t be superwoman, or I struggle with something totally beyond my control?

Managing False Guilt

The first and most important step in learning to manage false guilt is to recognize it. That is where we have the most trouble because, remember, it usually feels just like true guilt. We must develop the practice of examining our guilty feelings and determining if they are true or false.

The second step is to replace wrong thinking with right thinking. When you’re dealing with false guilt, you must, by choice, push that wrong thinking out of your mind. Philippians 4:8 says we are to think about things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. When we are feeling guilty undeservedly, we are allowing our minds to be filled with thoughts that are not true and certainly not lovely. Push those wrong thoughts out with true and lovely ones.

One way to do this is through praise to the Lord. Isaiah says we are kept in perfect peace when our minds are stayed on the Lord (Isaiah 26:3). Start counting your blessings. Begin thanking God for the good things in your life. Refuse to allow the thoughts of false guilt to have a place in your mind.

Remember that you can stand up to false guilt and declare you are no longer under its power. It may be a bit of a journey to learn to manage that false guilt, and you may experience both success and failure as you head down that path. Don’t be discouraged. There is great relief ahead as we stand firm in the freedom that Christ gives us and refuse to allow ourselves to be burdened again by a yoke of slavery, as Galatians 5:1 admonishes us.