Guilt and Grace
MESSAGE TRANSCRIPTION:
My name is Brandon, and I am one of the leaders around here. I lead our high school student ministry here at Eastside. I also lead our A crew team, our facilities team here at Eastside. But I am so thankful that you guys are joining us this morning. Whether you’re here on campus or you’re joining us online, we are continuing the sermon series called Grace is Greater. And I just want to start off by asking what I think is a simple question. What emotion do you think we commonly struggle with as humans? What emotion do you think we commonly struggle with as humans? I know for a lot of us, maybe our first thought would say maybe it’s joy. The emotion that we deal with more often is joy. Some would say sadness. Some would say happiness is what we deal with. Some would say fear. And I would say fear is most certainly a big one because fear is one of the most advertised and politicized things because people build things off of our fear. They advertise things around our fear. Some of you guys would say it’s anger. Some would say loneliness, and some would even say it’s isolation. And you might be thinking it’s one of these emotions that we deal with and that we struggle with. But I would challenge you. I would challenge you that I personally think the emotion that we most commonly experience is.
GUILT
I believe guilt is the emotion that we most commonly deal with. And I believe people are walking around with the weight of guilt in their life, and they don’t even know that they’re walking around with this weight guilt in their life. And why do I think that guilt is the most common emotion that we deal with? Well, I would say first it’s because it’s one of the greatest things I deal with in my life. Guilt has constantly shaped and created so many avenues in my life. Guilt is a great thing that I deal with in my life. But I would also say this Not only is it something that I deal with, but second, it is how the devil seeks to derail us, is how the devil wants to derail us in our life. And we’re going to talk more about that in a moment. But we have to answer the question, what is guilt? And I would say it’s this simple.
GUILT- I have done something wrong
I’ve done something wrong. It is a matter of I’ve made a mistake that you know you shouldn’t have done. And where does this sense or this thought that I’ve done something wrong come from? Where does this emotion of guilt come from? Well, true guilt comes from God. Let’s look at James’ chapter two. And this is what it says.
“The person who keeps every law of God but makes one little slip is just as guilty as the person who has broken every law there is.”
James 2:10 (TLB)
So we need to recognize the reason we feel guilty when we do wrong. James makes it clear the reason we feel guilty is that when we do wrong, we are wrong. Right. Like when we do wrong, we are wrong. And that’s why we feel guilty. That’s why we feel like we’ve messed up. And we need to recognize that. We need help. We need grace. We need God. We need a savior. And the reality is we don’t embrace where true guilt leads us. And where it leads us is to Jesus. It does lead us to a savior. And the reason we don’t see the gift of true guilt is that false guilt. False guilt has extinguished the purpose and the true light of true guilt. And I want to take a moment for you to let me explain.
FALSE GUILT
False guilt is when you can’t get past your past, Right? It’s when you’ve done something wrong. And you can’t get past that. When you live in guilt for your mistakes and you focus on your problems, it’s when you get lost in the things that you regret, and you want to change, but you can’t. False guilt is when you deal with guilt in your own power and not in God’s power. And now I see it, I think the most dangerous thing about false guilt is exactly what Lauren shared. I think the most dangerous thing about false guilt is where it leads us, and false guilt leads us to negative self-talk. Every time it leads us to negative self-talk, we bash ourselves time and time and time again every time that we live in our guilt. More often than not, this is what our mind sounds like. We say stuff like.
NEGATIVE SELF TALK:
I’m an idiot
I’m incompetent
I’m not enough
I can’t believe I am the way I am
I’m a screw up
I’ll never measure up
I’ll never get it right
And the reality is the list can go on and on and on, just like Lauren shared. Some of us feel like we’re not a good enough parent, not a good enough father, not a good enough mother. And the reality is we often talk to ourselves way more harshly than we would anyone else, right? A lot of times, the way that we speak to ourselves, we would never speak that way to someone else. And when we get stuck in the things that we have done wrong, and we start to go down the road of negative self-talk, life continues to grow heavier and heavier, and our soul becomes overwhelmed with false guilt to the point where it’s almost crippling when we live in false guilt. Our life projects negative self-talk. We almost become crippled by it. The Bible says this.
“My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear…..”
Psalm 38:4 (NIV)
My guilt has overwhelmed me time and time again to the point that I’m trembling. For many of us, we get lost in our guilt, and it becomes a burden too heavy to bear. And I don’t know if you get it or not, but this is how Satan wants you to define your life. This is how Satan wants you to define your life. He wants you to define your life through negative self-talk. He wants you to live in false guilt. He wants you to be led to negative self-talk, and he wants you to believe every lie that you’re going to tell yourself and that he’s going to whisper in your ear, he wants you to be more focused on your circumstances and for you to work more out of your own power than out of God’s power because this is what He wants you to believe. He wants you to believe you will never bounce back when you make that mistake. He wants you to believe that no one will ever look at you the same when you make that mistake. He wants you to believe that God will never forgive you. He wants you to believe that you’re too far gone and that you’re not savable because of what you did. And perhaps the biggest mistake and lie that he will convince you of is that you can do it in your own power, that you don’t need people, and that you don’t need God to get through it. And because of this, Satan traps us. Because of this, Satan is able to get a foothold in our life because we believe the lie that we’re supposed to figure out ourselves. And do it on our own.
And now, Paul, in the New Testament, all of us are pretty familiar with Paul. He wrote over 70% of the New Testament, and he was dealing with people that were dealing with the same problem. Paul has dealt with people who had the same problem. This problem that we deal with of guilt is not anything new. He wrote in Galatians 3:3 This is what he says.
“You began your life in Christ by the Spirit. Now are you trying to make it complete by your own power? That is foolish.”
Galatians 3:3 (NCV)
Paul says you started in Christ. And now, the things that you’re dealing with, you’re trying to complete it in your own power. And we all know that is foolish because of where it leads us. Every time I believe that this is the lie that the devil wants to feed us the most because if you can get us to live in false guilt, he can get us to talk negatively to ourselves and bash ourselves. And if he can get us to do that, he can get us to believe in the lie that we’re supposed to do it on our own. And then we find ourselves defining guilt by satan’s terms instead of God’s terms, we find ourselves defining guilt by satan’s terms instead of God. And now I believe the way that we deal with guilt hasn’t really changed. It hasn’t changed since the man stepped on the scene. And I know a lot of us we’re familiar with the story of Adam and Eve, right? This is a common story that many of us heard growing up. But you got Adam and Eve, and they step onto the scene, and God makes it clear to them that everything in the garden is yours. Everything is yours. You can delight in everything. It’s all for your good. I love you. I care for you. I’ve created everything for you. But one thing, right? Remember what that one thing was, right? It was this tree of good and evil. He said, Just don’t touch that. But everything else is yours.
But long story short, we know what happens if Eve is convinced of this lie and she gives in. Then Adam quickly follows this lie, and he gives in. And immediately, they became aware. And when they became aware, they realized that they had guilt, and what they decided to do with that guilt next was to live. They decided to put themselves under false guilt instead of God’s true guilt and how he wanted us to deal with it in the first place. And so, how did they handle it? How did they handle the guilt? Once they got lost in it, how did they handle the guilt once they decided that they were going to live in it? How did they handle the guilt? Once they decided they were going to let Satan, define what guilt was instead of God. Well, in Genesis three, this is what it says, and this is summarized.
“… they sewed fig leaves together and made something to cover themselves… they hid from the Lord God… ‘I was afraid because I was naked’… “She gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it.”
Genesis 3:7-12 (NCV)
So we see what they do, and maybe you noticed it, and maybe you didn’t. But there were three signs that demonstrated that Adam and Eve were living under false guilt. And we have to ask ourselves the question, is this how our life is identified? Because we have to ask the question, are we living under false guilt? Are we living under false guilt? And I believe Adam and Eve demonstrate to us and make it obvious how we often find ourselves living in false guilt.
OUR WAYS OF HANDLING GUILT:
HIDING
SHAME
BLAMING
First, the first thing we notice is they live in hiding. The first thing they do is that they realize that they are naked, and they cover themselves up. They cover themselves up and try to hide from God. And the best analogy that I have of us trying to hide from God is this all right, we’re going to play a game of hide and seek, okay. Do you see me? Right. Come on. This is how we try to hide from God when we do wrong. When we mess up. When we trip up, we believe that we can hide from God. And it’s just like that. It is insane. It’s me trying to hide behind this, but the reality is we can’t hide anything from God. We can’t run from God. God knows everything. He sees everything. But the reality is they tried that. They tried hiding, They tried hiding.
Then it goes on. Not only did they try hiding, but they also dealt with shame. Now, I know many of us dealt with shame, right? We often define our lives by shame. And why did Adam Eve struggle with shame? It’s because when they decided to live in guilt, when they decided to let Satan define guilt in their life, they focused on the sin that they messed up in. And because they focused on that and moved from the thing that they messed up and it moved to their identity. Often when we mess up. When we trip up, when we sin, when we fall short, we often get stuck in the mindset of the thing that we did wrong. And then we go from talking about the thing that we did wrong and then we start dealing with our identity. We start going back to that negative self-talk. I’m not enough because I messed up. I’ll never measure up because I messed up. Do you realize what I did? No one’s going to love me. No one’s going to accept me. We start dealing with our identity instead of dealing with the thing that we messed up. Adam and Eve. They challenge their identity and who God created them to be. They challenge their very creator and the image that they bear because of the things that they do. So maybe you’re hiding this morning, or maybe you’re dealing with shame.
And the last thing that they did was blame. And I would say that this is a really popular one in our lives. I would say that we, more often than not, do this. And the reality is that this Genesis story, it’s somewhat tragic but humorous at the same time because you’ve got Adam and Eve, and then there’s the serpent, and they are convinced to do wrong. And the first thing that God does is ask, Adam, why did you eat from the tree? Why did you eat from the tree? And guess what Adam did? He took it like a man. And he blamed his wife. Right. Yeah, we often do that. You guys are laughing, but like, someone’s nudging you right now, Like you do that all the time. I mean, Adam took it like a man, and he blamed his wife. And guess what, Eve? Blame the serpent. They didn’t take ownership of the guilt for the mistakes that they made. They blamed someone else. And more often than not, this is the trouble that we get into in our lives when we make a mistake. When we trip up, we want to blame everyone else. We want to blame the people in our circle. We want to blame the people who did we wrong 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And we define our life by this false guilt because we’re hiding from God. We’re feeling ashamed of who we are, even though he says you are far more than we realize. And then we also define our lives by blaming everyone else, never taking responsibility for the mistakes and shortcomings that we have.And I know that in my life when I deal with guilt more often than not, this is what my life looks like. My wife will blame me. I thought she was going to, but she missed their opportunity. I blame her a lot. I blame her a lot. When I mess up, I think I can hide from God. And not only do I hide from God, but I hide from people. And even more than that, when I’m guilty, I feel ashamed all the time. I feel shame for who I am, and I forget who God created me to be. And the best story I could come up with, I was like, How do I share a story of the time that I messed up? That’s not too much to share, right? Too much from the stage, because I don’t tell you guys everything.
I was like, I remember once when I was a kid, and my parents left on a date or something. I don’t know where they were going, but I was at home by myself. I was probably about nine or ten because I guess you were allowed to do that type of thing. Leave your kids at home when they are nine or ten. So anymore, I don’t think. But I was nine or ten. My parents went out and I got the urge to be artistic, so I found a Sharpie. And when I did with the Sharpie, I went to my parent’s room, and they had this beautiful box fan that they kept on their floor for when they slept at night. And I started drawing all over this box fan. I don’t know what happened. I just got a sudden burst of creativity, and I started drawing all over this box fan. And immediately after I got done drawing on this box fan, I was like, Man, I probably shouldn’t have done that. I probably shouldn’t have done that. And you know, how I knew I was wrong as I heard them pull into the driveway, and instantly when they pulled into the driveway, I went and hid under my bed. I went and hid because I didn’t want them to find me like they weren’t going to find me. Right? This is what we do with God. I messed up, and I tried to go hide, and when my dad comes in my room, he’s like, Brandon, get out from under the bed. And so I crawl out from under the bed, and then the next thing I go to is I start blaming. I was like, Well, James and Shelby, my brother and sister, they wanted me to do it. They told me to do it. They said that they were in charge. So I listened in immediately because I felt this guilt. Not only was I trying to hide from my parents, but I was trying to blame everyone else. And obviously, they knew that that wasn’t true. And because I was caught in the lie, because I was caught in my guilt and as as as innocent as I was only being eight or nine years old. Actually, started to feel the weight of what shame was. Because I hid. And because I lied. Because I blamed everyone else. When I looked into my dad’s eyes, I saw the hurt that he felt. Immediately I felt shame about who I was as a nine-year-old, not because of what he had done but because of what I chose to do.And the reality is, this is often what our life looks like with God. Every time that we feel guilt, every time that we deal with guilt, we think we can hide. And then, when we hide, we think we can just blame other people when we’re found. And then, when we’re found, and we’re caught blaming other people, we start to feel shame about who God has created us to be. And so we have to ask ourselves the question, are we living under this false guilt? Are you hiding from God? Are you blaming other people? And do you feel ashamed of who you’ve been created to be? Because see, God doesn’t want you to hide from him. God doesn’t want you to blame other people. God doesn’t want you to feel ashamed of who he’s created you to be. See, God’s way of handling guilt is completely different than the way that we handle the guilt.
GOD’S WAY OF HANDLING GUILT: GRACE
God wants to handle guilt with grace. And what do I mean by grace? I’m talking about the grace that transforms you. I’m talking about the grace that changes you. I’m talking about grace That does not leave you in your guilt but pushes you along to keep changing and transforming and growing more in the likeness of Christ. God’s grace is here to forgive you, to change you, to help you, and to remind you that you are more than you think you are. You’re more than your mistakes. You’re more than your wrongdoings, you’re more than your sin, you’re more than your shortcomings. And so God wants to handle our guilt with grace. And I think the best way I could define it is guilt.
GUILT IS GOD’S WARNING LIGHT
Now, I know for most of us, most of us drive a car, and in your car, a lot of you guys would be familiar with this picture right here. Who knows what that is, right? Especially now. Right. Gas has gone up. We know exactly what that is. So God’s warning light in our life is a lot like this you got this gauge on your car. One represents empty and one represents full. And often, when it gets down here, this light right here will go off our gas light. And now, how many of you know what this means? You got a problem with your car. You’re about to run out of gas. And regardless of what some of you think, some of you guys believe it means extra fuel, and you can make it 50 more miles or 100 more miles. Some of you guys wrote in this morning thing, that very thing, it means extra fuel. I got at least 50 more miles before I ran out of gas. But this is the reality, right? This is how we treat our life and guides and guides. How God likes to deal with guilt in our life is he likes to send us a signal when the light goes off. It means that you need to give your attention to the problem in your car.
But often we try to fix it by pretending it’s not there, pretending that we can go further than what it actually says by trying to hide it, by trying to ignore it. This is often how we try to deal with guilt in our life. And what I’m trying to say is that we deal with guilt in a lot of different ways. We deal with this warning light in a lot of different ways. But the truth is, if something is really wrong if something is really wrong, the best thing to do is to get it fixed. When the warning light of guilt goes off in your life, when God sent this warning, the light of guilt in your life and it goes off, we need to give it our attention. We need to recognize that God’s saying, You need to lean into me right now because it’s about to go wrong. You need to trust me. You need healing. You need forgiveness. This warning light that God sends into our life is not to condemn us. It’s to help us recognize how much more we actually need God. And I love this verse. Romans eight one says this.
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Romans 8:1 (NIV)
God does not sin this warning light into our life to condemn us. And often, we believe that this is the very truth of why guilt is in our life in the first place. It’s because God wants to condemn us, or we should feel really bad about who we are and what we’ve done. But he says, he says now there is no condemnation and those who are in Christ, you’ve now been changed and sinning this warning light into your life. To let you know, you need to lean in, you need to trust me, need a press into me. You need to know that I’m here for your good. And because God is for our good. We know that God has a plan for how we need to handle our guilt. Amen. Like we know that God has a plan for how we need to handle our guilt. Amen. Amen. And I believe the best verse that describes what God wants us to do. What God wants us to do in our lives, and how He handles our guilt. It is first John nine, and when I was preparing for this message. I read this verse before, and I had no clue what it really meant to me, and it took a lot of preparation to try to understand what this meant. But I have better clarity now that God has a fix for the guilt in our life. God has a way. He wants to handle the guilt in our life. And this is what he says.
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
1 John 1:9 (NIV)
God is faithful. God is just to do many things in our lives. And I believe God wants us to start taking this skill in our lives and handling it his way instead of Satan’s way. He wants to move us from false guilt. Into his grace. And so I believe there are three ways that God wants us to step into this light, step into this true guilt, and step towards his grace. And the first one is we need to confess our sins. Need to confess your sins. And I say that this is a really hard one. You need to confess your sins. You need to say, God, I did it. God, I messed up. We don’t only come to God with our needs, but we need to come to Him with our sins. We only come to God with our frustrations. But we need to come with our sins. We don’t only come to God, we’re mad or someone else is upsetting us. But we need to come with our son. And what do I mean by that? And I would say that there are a lot of terms and fancy definitions of what sin is. But I think the easiest way to define what sin is is we look at the middle letter. Sin has to deal with. I. Right. Has to deal with me. I’m my own worst enemy. I’m the problem. Often when we deal with sin in our life, we take God out of the equation. All right, God, I appreciate that last blessing, but I think I got it from here. All right, guys, Thank you so much for all that you’ve done. I’m at my high. I’m on top of the mountain. I’ll get back to you when I’m at my low.Often when we deal with sin in our life, it has to do with us. It’s self-centered. We become our own worst enemies. And because we become our own worst enemy. We move from true guilt into false guilt. We move into our own power instead of God’s power. And when it comes to sin, we got two options. We’ve got two options in our lives when it comes to whether we can either face up. Or we can cover up. We can either face up to our sin, we can own it, and realize that we’ve messed up, or we can try to cover it up and hide it. And what do I mean when I say face up to it? The number one thing we need to do is we need to tell God that we are facing up to our sins. We need to admit to God that we’re going to confess the sense that we’ve done wrong. And how do we confess as you tell God? And you might as well tell them because the reality is, remember, we can’t hide from them.
We can’t hide from God. We can’t hide the things that we’ve done. So you might as well tell them. You might as well tell them what you have done. This isn’t on the screen, but this verse is so good. It says in Psalms, it says God, you know what I have done wrong? I cannot hide my guilt from you. God, you know what I’ve done wrong? I cannot hide anything from you. I can not hide this guilt that I’m carrying from you. And there’s nothing more difficult than trying to hide your mistakes and your guilt from God. There’s nothing more tiring than trying to hide your guilt and your mistakes from God. There’s nothing more costly. Been trying to hide your guilt and your mistakes from God. So what do we have to do? We have to tell God. And how do we tell God? We tell him to pray. We have to pray to God, and we say, God, I’ve messed up again. God, I fell short again. This is where I’ve fallen short. And guess what? You can do this at any time. You can access God at any time. Even at this moment, you could bow your head and say, God, I need to own up to my mistakes. I need to own up to guilt. I need to own up to the sin in my life. Not only do we need to confess to God. We need to confess to God. But the Bible also encourages us to confess to a trusted friend in James. 5:16 It says this.
Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so God can heal you…
James 5:16 (NCV)
And I absolutely love this verse from James. I use it all the time, especially in my guys’ high school life group. I share this verse with them all the time. I tell them, I say Guys if you want to feel forgiven. Confess it to God. But if you want to experience healing, tell a friend. If you want to be forgiven, all you have to do is confess it to God. But if you want to experience true and deep healing, tell a trusted friend. And why should we do this? Why should we tell a trusted friend? Because of the sin in your life that seems so big, so overwhelming. Because it’s so much to bear. And the reason it’s so much to bear is that you keep it in the dark. When you tell a friend. You might hear a response like this. Oh, yeah. I deal with that, too. I deal with that too. I struggle with that as well. And the reality is the sin that seems so great in your life becomes scaled down. You realize you realize the actual size of the sin in your life is not that great because there’s someone else that’s going through it. There’s something healing about telling someone and them saying, Yeah, I struggle with that too. So not only in our life do we need to deal with guilt by confessing to God, but we also need to tell a trusted friend. And let me encourage you. It needs to be the right person. You don’t need to just go and tell anybody. You need to tell someone that you can trust, someone who loves you, someone who wants to pray for you. Someone who wants to encourage you. And when we do that, we will experience healing in our life. Because when we deal with sin in our life, we know that confessing our sins to God will help transform us when we confess to a trusted friend. We’ll experience healing. And when we experience this healing, our life can be changed.
And I know for some of you, you may be saying, Well, Brandon, I’ve done that a thousand times. I’ve told God. And I told a trusted friend I still feel lost in my guilt. I still feel lost in my shame. And I would say you’re on the right track. You’re on the right road because if you’re confessing your sins, you have to remember there’s more to the story. Not only do we need to confess our sins, but John one nine reminds us that we need to trust God’s character. We need to trust God’s character. And maybe many of you have confessed your sins, but you’ve never really got to. You’ve never really gotten to experience God’s forgiveness. And the reason you’ve not gone to experience God’s forgiveness is that you don’t trust his character. But it says in verse He is faithful and he is just. He is faithful, and he is just, and you can count on God. You can count on his faithfulness. You can count on his character. And I know a lot of people who say they can’t get close to God because they just don’t feel forgiving. Many of us say I can’t get close to God because I don’t feel forgiven. And the reason you don’t feel forgiven is that you don’t trust God’s character. Because I would tell you, the closer that you get to God, the more you’ll feel forgiven. The more you draw towards God, the more you know, you’re forgiven. But as long as you keep God at arm’s length in your life. You will never feel like you’re forgiven. As long as you keep him at a distance, you will never feel like you’re forgiven. Hebrews 10:22 says this.
“Let us come near to God with a sincere heart and a sure faith, because we have been made free from a guilty conscience…”
Hebrews 10:22 (NCV)
Jesus makes us feel free from a guilty conscience. And the reality is that’s what the cross was all about. That’s what the cross was all about. That’s what he gave his life for so that we can feel free from a guilty conscience. And once we accept that gift, once we accept the invitation, and we get close to him. You will start to feel this forgiveness in our life. We can start to trust his character when we start to understand that we can get close to God. We will understand His grace in a new way. We will experience His grace in a new way. We will taste and see His grace in a new way. And so, how does God deal with our guilt? Well, he wants us to confess. He wants us to confess our sins and realize that we have a problem. He wants you to share it with a brother or sister in Christ so you can feel healing in your life. Not only does he need you to do that, but he needs you to trust him. He needs you to trust his character and know that he is for you and that he is faithful and just. And that he loves you. And not only do we need to confess our sins, not only do we need to trust God’s character. But I would say this is the hardest one, which is we need to accept God’s forgiveness. We need to accept God’s forgiveness in our life. And if we confess our sins. He is faithful. He can be trusted to forgive us. If we confess our sins, we know, just like the verse says, that he will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And more often than not, when we see that verse, we think that God cleanses us of some unrighteousness. Like, okay, I’m kind of clean, but I’m kind of not. God was able to help me this much, but not completely because I am really far gone. God was able to forgive me, but not completely. But the verse says it says, Not some, not most, not a lot, but will purify us from all righteousness. He will purify us from all righteousness. And I know there are a lot of people who ask for God’s forgiveness when they recognize that Jesus is willing to forgive, but yet they live their life like they’re not forgiven.
We often live our life like we’re not forgiven. There’s this verse in John it says, People who believe in God’s son are not judged guilty. People who believe and trust in Jesus are not judged guilty. God is faithful and just to cleanse us from all righteousness. When we believe in Christ and trust what He did for us on the cross, the Bible says that we’re not judged guilty. The reality is, if you believe in Christ, if you believe in Jesus, if you believe in what he’s done for you if we believe that we are not judged guilty, why do we continue to judge ourselves as guilty? Why do we make ourselves the judge of our own life? Why do we step in and place? Because God has made it clear. If you’re in Christ, I no longer judge you as guilty, but I judge you as made new has made clean. It’s transformed. Now. I think the reason that we struggle with. Believing. God’s forgiveness of our life. Believing that we are not judged guilty is because when we live under this false guilt, we get caught in this negative self-talk. And when we get caught in this negative self-talk. That’s all we hear. Because we hear these lies lines. We hear the whisper of the devil. And I think the best way that we can challenge these thoughts is because we have to do something with them, we have to challenge them. They cannot stay here. We cannot become captive to these thoughts in our minds, but we have to do something about it.
And I believe the best way that we challenge this false guilt, the best way that we challenge the self-negative talk that we have in our life is we need God’s truth. We need God’s word in our life. This is the only way that we deal with the lies from hell, from Satan himself. It’s God’s Word. Because God is the author of all truth. He is the truth. And so what I believe we have to do is we have to replace the thought. We have to replace negative self-talk. So this morning at 9:30, I know we’re normally quiet, and we’re tired. But I think this morning, I think it would be a beautiful and wonderful thing if we learned a verse together. Because, again, the only way that we can deal with this false guilt in our life is we have to start with God’s truth. And so you may have seen this card on your chair. I want you to go ahead and get that. It’s got this verse on it and then brings it up on the screen. In second Corinthians ten five. And I want you guys to repeat after me. I’m going to help you guys, but we’re going to learn this first together because, again, the only way we deal with false guilt and negative self-talk in our lives is we have to replace it with God’s truth. So we take every. We take every. Come on, say it again. We take every. All right, We’re going to do this again. Hang on. We got it. We got it. We got it. 9:30.
“…we take every thought captive and make it obey Christ.”
2 Corinthians 10:5 (NET)
I just want you to repeat directly after me. Okay? We take every thought captive. And make it obedient to Christ. one more time. We take every thought captive and make it obedient. To who? All right. I want you to say one last time by yourself. Go ahead. Very good. Why do we have to do this? What does this verse mean for our life? What does this verse mean? That we have to take every thought captive. What does God mean when he says we have to take every thought captive in our life and make it obedient? It means when you fall short, and you say, I’m not enough, you’re going to quote this verse this week. You’re going to say, I’m going to take every thought captive. Right. When you feel like you’re too far gone and God will never forgive you, you have to stop in your tracks. You need to look at this verse. You need to remind yourself, I’m going to take every thought captive. When you feel like you’re not enough and you’re a waste of God’s time. You’re not a good enough mom. You’re not a good enough dad. You’re not a good enough friend. You believe that you’re just not good enough. You’re going to go back to this truth. You’re going to go back to this truth that God says. He says that we take every thought captive. Take every thought captive, and we’re going to make it obey Christ. We’re going to make it obey the one who died for us. We’re going to make it obey the one who took our place on the cross and died so that we can be made free from guilt. So this morning, I want to invite you to stand. And this morning, as we go into worship, we’re going to sing about the power of Jesus, his death on the cross, and his blood that covers each and every one of us. All this guilt, all the shame, all the lies that we feel this morning. Has been covered in Jesus’s blood. So this morning, I want you to declare and worship. I want you to declare in your life. This morning, we’re going to take every thought captive, and we’re going to make it obey Christ this morning because he died In our place.