Day Eleven
DAY ELEVEN
Today I want to begin to unpack some of the things that we can avoid or be aware of that are faith stealers; the things that diminish our faith and deplete it.
Guilt is a painful internal alarm that alerts us to the fact that we have sinned. It is a private anguish, which prods us to acknowledge our destructive behaviors towards ourselves and towards others. Despite our aversion to emotional pain, guilt is a distress signal to try to warn us that something is wrong. If we don’t heed guilt and deal with it, either by acknowledging our fault and changing our behavior, or recognizing that the guilt we feel has been placed on us by someone else and isn’t ours to carry, then it quickly becomes SHAME.
Shame is a destructive emotion that makes us want to hide, we pull away from God and from others and this becomes a powerful faith stealer.
The way to defeat shame is to work backwards and determine, am I guilty? If you are, confess your sin, and know that it is forgiven by God.
1 John 1:8-9
If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.
If you have already confessed, shoo the enemy away and don’t allow that ‘bird’ to settle in your heart again. Don’t allow the enemy to remind you of something God has put in the sea of His forgetfulness.
It is also important to remember that we often say, “I feel guilty” when we put boundaries in place that others do not like. What we are feeling is not guilt but anxiety, which comes from not being able to meet our own or other people’s expectations. This is often referred to as ‘false guilt,’ and can rob faith just as much as real guilt can.
Determine today to deal with guilt and shame whether false or real and move forward into faith growing territory!
Scripture to meditate on: 1 John 1:5-22