Guilt Trip Sermon by James Massey

I've definitely been called at different times of my life to do various things in service to the Lord. I've ridden the faith train many times, only to be derailed most often by my own self made obstacles. As it has been said many times throughout history...thank God for His grace and His gentle hands of mercy. He always picks me up and brushes me off, then leads me to something in His word that ultimately brings understanding to my situation. I can't begin to tell you just how many times I've been rescued from my own mind and my own goals. In fact, I shamefully admit...I've forgotten just how many times God has saved me from myself!

I once wrote a sermon, not that it was ever preached - but I once wrote a sermon on the cycle of guilt. I've shared it with several people through out the years, and most found huge freedom from years of depression and self blame by its message. I want to share it with the readers of The Destination Magazine as an encouragement for hard times, and as a reminder that more often than not our biggest enemy is our view of ourselves and the misconceptions we have of the fullness of God's forgiveness.

The grace of God can be made known to us in many ways; someone sharing their faith, God working in our hearts, or by spending time in His word. When we begin to understand God's grace we are overwhelmed with gratitude and we are happy to be saved. But, this gratitude sometimes inspires a human, falsely pursued goal...and that is to change our lives and become a better Christian for God. Before you stop and say "Wait just a minute!", please here me out? When we realize how much God has done for us, it often makes us want to make God happy, we want to please Him! So, we try. We try to overcome a certain area of sin in our lives, maybe even several areas all at the same time. For a few days, maybe even a few weeks we have glorious victory while we ride out the high emotional drive we have...we're bound and determined to make it because we love God so much!

Then...it happens. We fail. We end up falling in our futile efforts, and the distance from our mountain top to the valley is huge. We hit the dirt face first, totally destroyed by our guilt. By my failure, the maker of the Universe, the one who had so much grace for us to begin with, has been let down.

The whole idea of striving to live a life without sin creates a standard that we hold ourselves too. The problems really become intense when we end up transferring this standard to God as if it was His expectation of us. Our thinking becomes "Since God is obviously greater than me, He must desire for me to be at least 'this good'". However, once we place this standard as if it was God's expectations for us, we realize we can't live up to it and we start to feel enmity against God because we have imagined that He demands SO much out of us! We start to resent the fact that there's no way we could ever satisfy Him. We end up distancing ourselves from God, loosing the closeness that we had and loosing the Christ like character that had been living within us. We are depressed and we resort to our old ways as they are comfortable. We become even more alienated as we continue our process of wrong doing.

Then, one day, we remember the truth to God's grace...again. We understand that God has forgiven us for everything that we've ever done! Suddenly the excitement causes us to let go of our self expectation and we relish in His forgiveness and we bask in knowing that it was God who brought us back to Him! He had gone searching, like a shepherd! Once again we learn, we study, we obey and we follow. Over time, with the great understanding of just how much God loves us and just how much He does for us, we feel the need to serve Him by holding ourselves to a certain level of effort - to show our dedication and obedience to Him! We realize something in our lives that needs work such as a sinful habit and we dedicate ourselves to overcoming it to honor and please Him, and the cycle starts all over again. We will strive, we will fail; we feel guilty. We label our misconstrued expectations as if they were God's and we create the elements of enmity against our Father because we can't possibly live up to those requirements!

Eventually, this cycle will inevitably lead us to complete alienation from God or worse. It takes a true and clear understanding of God's grace to overcome this cycle. What is also very important is a clear and profound understanding of how we are to truly obtain a Christ like character, thus eliminating sin from our lives.

There is only one way to begin a transformation from our human flesh with all of its sinful desires, to that of a godly and righteous person and that is to dwell on God. Spending time learning about Him, realizing His character and perceiving Him is what will morph us into the vessels that He created us to be. Go outside on a quiet night. (You may have to take a drive away from the city to find some peace) Walk out into the darkness, and just...look up. Gaze upon the heavens and observe their greatness. What majesty the Lord must possess to be able to create such a beautiful blanket of twinkling beauty!

Listen to the wind, watch the moon as it passes. Spend time with God in that place. Cry out to Him, sing to Him, PRAISE HIM for His creation!!! The universe contains a sermon, did you know that? The word Uni - means single. The word Verse - means a spoken sentence. The Uni-Verse is but a single spoken sentence of God! How awesome is that??? And God said "Let there be..."

Perceive God, take Him in, bask in His majesty, and allow your heart to be moved. I believe that experience will bring you closer to Christ's character than a hundred years of trying of your own efforts to be righteous. A quiet time in God's word while listening to the Spirit's leading will define Christ's amazing character throughout the pages as you turn. As you spend time with the Lord in these intimate moments, areas of sin in your life will be revealed by the holiness that you have been surrounded with. When you realize sinfulness in your life, simply repent of it and turn it over to the Lord. Ask the Lord to fill the hole left by that sin being removed. That time spent with your Savior will etch His figure in your heart. That is what breaks the cycle and that is what enables us to become a more Christ like person. Ultimately this becomes the greatest praise and glory to God...that by communion with Him, a sinful human being is made holy and righteous.

This is not to say that when you're faced with a decision to sin, or not to sin that you should give in and just trust the Lord to forgive you. That would be an outright abuse of grace! What I mean by this study is that once you've spent time with the Lord, once you're open to the Holy Spirit...you'll find your self not having to "make a decision" anymore, the decision will already be made in your heart. The temptation won't exist because sin has no place in the heart and mind of God which you are now adopting, reflecting out of yourself into the world! Praise God for the work that He can do through us when we're not even trying!

God Bless you all!