#170: I have sinned again (gutsy guilt)
If you are like me and have backslidden a lot of times, today's study is for you. But if you are the strong and mighty, we will meet on another Sunday. By God's grace today He will be delivering many from a trap that our adversary keeps us in.
The more we grow in the knowledge of God, we realise that God's character is a spectrum; laying emphasis on just one aspect of God will give a skewed relationship with Him. One of such dilemmas that plague children of God in their walk with Him is His love and justice. If we focus on just one without considering the other, we have an unbalanced life walking with God.
Many times we lay so much emphasis on God's justice to the extent that we distance ourselves from His love and grace. Many times when I backslide, the guilt of my sins cage me and keep me in the same loop to keep on sinning. But how does God want us to behave when we have fallen short of His glory? We will read a couple of bible verses and draw out some lessons:
But as for me, I will look to the LORD;
I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.
Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; When I fall, I shall rise;
When I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me.
I will bear the indignation of the LORD because I have sinned against Him
until He pleads my cause and executes judgement for me.
He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon His vindication.
Then my enemy will see, and shame will cover her who said to me,
"where is your God?"
My eyes will look upon her; now she will be trampled down like the mire on the streets.
Who is a God like You, pardoning Iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in steadfast love.
He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot.
You will cast all our sins into the depth of the sea.
You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from days of old. Micah 7:7-10;18-20
Brothers and Sisters, gutsy guilt is all about acknowledging our wrongs before God, but not allowing it to weigh us so down that we cannot rise from there in victory from God's love, mercy and grace in the cross. Even though we have sinned, when the Devil comes to condemn us, we should be able to speak like the verses above. This was very helpful for men of old and it still gives strength to believers today. Let us look at another scripture:
I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of His wrath. Lam 3:1
This is the lamentation of one who had sinned and is severely punished by God. This by itself is enough to make us cave in and live forever in condemnation that God does not care. but as we read this beautiful chapter, we see that the person lamenting had gutsy guilt; so this is what he says in vs 20 to 31 after he had spent enough time to describe God's justice expressed through His divine wrath on the sin he committed:
My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
His mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
The LORD is my portion says my soul, therefore I will hope in Him.
The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for a man that he bears the yoke of in his youth.
Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him;
let him put his mouth in the dust-there may yet be hope;
let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults.
For the LORD will not cast off forever. Lam 3:20-31
I pray that God will help us all to embrace the love of Christ in its fullness (Eph 3:18&19). And to be clear that we are not giving an unbalanced view of God, it can be seen in these scriptures that sin will always be punished. But sin is not and should never be the end of a believer. Because God is a God of love. These scriptures invite us to wait on God because It is through Him that we will be saved. Salvation is of the LORD. And even in the pit of sin, God still hears us if we call to Him for salvation (Lam 3:55; Jonah 2:2; Psalm 130:1). He is ever near. So let the enemy not deceive us further by aggravating our sins far beyond what God's mercy can freely pardon. When we are lamenting over our shortcomings, we should not be hopeless like these verses that ended the book of lamentations:
Why do You forget us forever?
Why do You forsake us for so many days?
Restore us to Yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored!
Renew our days as of old -
unless You have utterly rejected us, and You remain exceedingly angry with us. Lam 5:20-22
This was definitely a hard time for the writer (during the exile of Judah in Babylon) but today, we know how the story ends; we know that in Jesus, God showed us for all time that He has not utterly rejected us. This is how He expressed this in another verse:
How can I give you up oh Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?
How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zebolim?
My heart recoils within Me; My compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim;
for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. Hosea 11:8&9
Finally, let us consider this Psalm:
Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and in irons,
for they had rebelled against the words of God and spurned the counsel of the Most High,
So He bowed their hearts down with hard labour; they fell down, with none to help.
Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress.
he brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and burst their bonds apart.
Let them thank the LORD for His steadfast love for His wondrous works to the children of man!
for He shatters the doors of bronze and cuts in two the bars of iron. Psalm 107:10-16
The same God whom we have sinned against, the same God who has bowed our hearts with hard labour as disciplining us for our sin is indeed a loving God whom you can call to in your distress and He will save you. About 7 times in this Psalm, the psalmist paints a picture of people who have backslidden and God gave them up to their enemy, but when they cried to God in their distress, He heard them and saved them. Only a person with gutsy guilt can cry to the LORD in his or her distress instead of sulking to the tune of the Devil. May God help us.
Thought:
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Heb 4:16
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