Fulfilling Your Destiny
Journey Into The Promised Land
Living In Past Guilt
The Bible is full of good things that God wants to do for us:
- No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. (Psalm 84:11)
- Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. (Psalm 37:4)
- Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all. (Psalm 34:19)
It is Satan who has caused some scriptures to be twisted and misapplied so that people will not know that it is the will of God to literally pour out His blessings upon them in this day!
Some people cannot believe that it is the will of God to bless them because they feel unworthy. They have committed some sin in the past and Satan has kept them in bondage to guilt. It is true that we may not deserve God’s blessings, but they are given on the basis of Christ’s worth, not our own worth. Just as Christ bore our sins, He bore our sicknesses. He also bore our guilt and shame. Even if we have committed terrible sins, we can repent and come to Him for forgiveness:
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18)
Once God has forgiven us, we must forgive ourselves and not let guilt feelings continue to rob us of the good things of God
Some years ago there was a struggling young woman who barely lived from paycheck to paycheck. She would run out of money before every payday. Those were the days when it took three or four days for checks to get to the bank after they were cashed, so she would cash a check and then live in fear and dread that the check would get to the bank before she got there with her paycheck to cover it.
For years, even after this lady was living on less of an emergency basis, she had an unreasonable guilt when trying to cash a check.
“I just can’t cash a check,” she confessed to a friend. “I feel so guilty.”
“Well,” asked her friend, “Is the check covered?”
It was. This woman was living on past guilt which kept her from enjoying the convenience of her checking account. When she realized that she had money in the bank to cover her check and that her guilt feelings were not related to her real situation, she gained a new sense of security in cashing checks.
There is no need to continue to feel guilty over things that have happened in our past and for which we have received forgiveness. We can go before God with a clean slate because of the forgiveness we have in Christ. Our account, so to speak, is completely covered, our conscience completely clear.
Make this declaration:
I will no longer live in the guilt and shame of the past. God has forgiven my transgressions and removed them from me as far as the east is from the west.
*Adapted from MCWE email – Journey Into The Promised Land by Morris Cerullo
