As we continue through the book of Enemies of the Heart by Andy Stanley, we hit chapter 12 and we are faced with a impactful reality.

We have realized the 4 enemies:

• Guilt – I owe You
• Anger – You owe Me
• Greed – I owe Me
• Jealousy – God owes Me

We clarified last week that one of the powerful opportunities that we have to combat guilt is to bring the situation out into the light and confess it. To step out of the denial of the situation and get right with God.

One of the lingering challenges and confusing situations that many Christians face is “if I confessed my sin to God, why do I still feel guilty”? Some even question if God forgave them of a situation if there is a lingering guilt feeling.

The challenges that we face are that we want to be forgiven, and we truly only want to do the minimum. If the world and our life was perfect, we would confess to God, thank Him for his new mercies and be all better. But that is not the whole picture.

God is a God of mercy, but he is also righteous. There are consequences to all decisions, good and bad.  Just because God forgives us of our sin does not mean that he forgives us of the consequences that come with our sin.  When we go to God and confess and repent (don’t forget that part) we are forgiven by God for our actions, but we need to face the consequences of the sin and that is where many do not tread.

Public confession has the power to purge our hearts of the guilt that keeps us from living out in the open; secret confession does not.

Have you ever truly went to God and confessed about something you did to someone, or about how you acted around someone, and you get that initial relief. That feeling that God understands, loves you and everything is going to be alright. Then you come around the corner and “bam” that person is right there.  You know in your heart you did the biblical practice of confessing, you don’t ever intend to act that way again. You even walked out James 5:16

Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. – James 5:16 NLT

But right now, wonderful results are not being felt. Then our mind races, maybe I’m not forgiven. Maybe God knows more about the situation that I thought.

This is not uncommon in life, do you have examples of these unpleasant moments?

The challenge is that we still need to pay the consequences to our actions. Pride and shame want us to go to God and ask for forgiveness and never have to face the consequences. Well that is not how life is arranged. This is also the situation where many question their salvation or if God is as powerful as they were told.

Now the flip side, have you ever had someone come to you and apologize or say they were sorry about a situation they were in with you and it really did not mean much to you? Meaning, what they were apologizing about was not that big of a thing.  But in some sense, they seemed urgent, they seemed diligent, and then they felt relief.

There relief had to do with their unsettledness, their guilt, not yours. They were relieved because they were facing the consequences.

For many of us, we have worked through our inventory, identified the ones we hurt, and we took what we thought were the necessary steps to make things right. In Celebrate Recovery, we embrace the Principle 4 –

Evaluate all my relationships; offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I’ve done to others except when to do so would harm them or others.

So why do we have the guilty feeling still?  The principle has the truth, but in our fearful and wounded ways, we water down the last part of the principle. Let us take note, it does not say –

make amends for harm I’ve done to others except when it is difficult, embarrassing, or painful to me.

This principle gets presented and many think this is the ticket out. Just confess and try to make amends when it is easy. It was hard enough to go to God and confess, so it should be the final payment to cover all. But biblically we need to understand, God did come down as Jesus to pay for our sins of the past, present and future, but His goal is to have us change to be more like him. For change to happen, there will be effort on our part. We need to face our consequences.

The reason you still feel guilty about things in your past is because they’re still unresolved. Telling God you’re sorry doesn’t resolve your guilt because God wasn’t the only offended party.

There might even be more than one person that you need to make amends to. For example, if a man has an affair, there is the obvious amends to his spouse and even if there is full forgiveness, there is still that lingering guilt.  Like when sitting at dinner with the kids, and it does not feel well. The man has injured his children too, but he feels going to God and his wife is enough, but the children are impacted and guilt can push a man to cleanse his character even more to have the painful discussion. Remember, the confession many times is not about the relief of the person being wronged, but the one guilty of the offense.

For increased freedom in our lives, we need to monitor our hearts, get the feelings out into the light. We need accountability and discipleship. We need to be responsible for our consequences and own them. Being forgiven does not erase our responsibilities.

Next week we will be going through chapter 13, taking on possibly the most dangerous enemy of our heart; anger.