Posted on 09/16/2022 8:05:07 AM PDT by metmom
Guilt is dangerous because it destroys faith. The enemy of our soul is not at all interested in making Christians into adulterers, addicts or prostitutes. He is interested in one thing only: turning Christians into unbelievers. He uses the lusts of the body to bind the mind.
Satan wants you to be so crushed with guilt so you let go of your faith. He wants you to doubt God’s faithfulness and think that nobody really cares, that you will live in misery and heartbreak, that you will always be a slave to your lust, that God’s holiness is unreachable, that you are left alone to work out your own problems, that God no longer cares about your needs and feelings. If he can get you to the point of despair, he can flood you with unbelief, and then he has succeeded in his mission. The three simple steps toward atheism are guilt, doubt and unbelief.
Guilt can eat away at the spiritual vitality of a Christian like a raging cancer. It causes a person to lose control of life; it leads to a desire to quit or retire from spiritual activity; and, finally, it brings on physical pain and disease. Like cancer, guilt feeds upon itself until all spiritual life is gone, and the end result is weakness and a sense of shame and failure.
The way to get rid of guilt is to get rid of sin, which sounds simple, but it is not. You don’t just make up your mind to “drop” that third party that has entered your life. Many have tried and found it didn’t work. You don’t just walk away from things that bind your heart.
The most important move you will ever make in your life is the move you make right after you fail God. Will you believe the accuser’s lies and give up in despair, or will you allow yourself to receive the forgiving flow of God’s love?
Do you fear asking his forgiveness because you are not really sure you want to be free from that thing that binds you? Do you want the Lord yet secretly long for something that is not lawfully yours? God is able to answer sincere prayer, to make you want to do his perfect will. Ask him to make you want to fulfill his will.
The Return ping
Guilt is a major weakness of Western culture. That’s why it’s exploited by others.
If you think about it that’s why the left is constantly trying to guilt trip America.
You’re supposed to have Jesus to wash away your guild.
Without one to wash away the guilt you will be constantly in a state of shame.
That’s why they hate Jesus, even after 2,000 years.
“wash away your guild”
guilt.
My fingers aren’t working correctly.
Your fingers are working just fine. Glory to God and his word!
I understand where the author is coming from - but on the other end of the spectrum, one strong marker of individuals with high levels of psychopathic tendencies is a lack of guilt, a lack of empathic concern, and a disregard for the impact of their decisions on others.
Guilt means you have a functioning and well-formed conscience, which is a gift from God - a well-functioning antenna to His Will and Natural Law.
My biggest challenge. I believe I’m forgiven, yet I feel guilty that Christ needed to suffer on my account.
I have to disagree with some of this. Majority of sex addicts don’t have guilt. None during their addiction. It’s only after being found out and facing the consequences do they start to have regret. Addicts can become like sociopaths, feeling nothing about their actions towards the people they sexually use. If they do “fall in love” it’s most likely a narcissistic projection. Sex addicts, porn users and others, damage the front part of their brain and it takes years to repair after they stop, if they stop. I hate how therapists wrap the addict and try and protect them from feeling guilt. That’s dangerous to their recovery as they need this start processing their years of addiction and behaviors towards loved ones. It takes years for an addict to get to that point because the narcissistic tendency of addicts always looks to blame someone else for their actions, i.e blame wife, family, friends, etc. Therapists should walk with the patients through guilt phase, if they ever truly reach that stage, and help them to make it out to the other side towards true recovery.
Not at all a simple matter to discuss or teach upon.
To the contrary.
It’s bound up closely with the faith-versus-works “conundrum”.
These are such delicate and perilous issues that it’s really the Lord’s personal aid to us individually, acting as the Good Shepherd physician, who attentively tends us through them.
Yes, definitely, there’s a dark side to our guilt that Satan has any number of ways of exploiting. Paradoxically, it would seem, Satan can use guilt to push people into unbelief as resentment against God causes their love for Him to grow cold indeed.
Yet, it’s always important to never, in a way, lose sight of our sin that we’re being saved from, or else almost immediately the tarish weeds of pride will sweep in and take root. Although God forgets it, it’s dangerous for us to while on this earth.
And we really need to have a growing dependence on His Spirit to continually see us safely through these perils on both sides of us.
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