What To Do With Guilt

Chapters

• 0:00 Radical Honesty As Prayer
• 2:06 The Garage Dent Confession Story
• 6:00 Public, Private, And Secret Selves
• 7:28 Genesis 3: Hiding And Blaming
• 11:10 God Seeks Us With Mercy
• 14:44 Psalm 32: The Cost Of Concealment
• 18:20 Relief Through Confession And Forgiveness
• 21:08 Hugging The Cactus: Owning Our Mess
• 25:12 Experiencing Deeper Love Through Honesty
• 28:06 A Four-Step Roadmap For Confession
• 32:06 Reflection Questions And Weekly Practice

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

Good morning and welcome. It's great to be here with you. My name is Mac. I'm one of the pastors on our team. Also, want to welcome all of you who are joining us from home. Thanks so much for tuning in. We are in the final uh week of this sermon series we're doing called Honest to God. And of course, the big idea throughout this series is that honesty is a key ingredient to having a relationship with God. God wants a personal relationship with each and every one of us, a deep and intimate relationship. And yet that's only possible to the degree that we each show up honestly and authentically with God. And so the through line of this entire series has been that God wants you to show up with 100% honesty. 100% honesty. And to get at this, we've been looking at the Psalms because the psalmists model this for us. Right? They don't fake it, they don't pretend with God. They don't sanitize their feelings first or clean up their emotions. They go to God right where they are in all their messy circumstances and with all their big emotions, and they just lay it out in God's presence. Even quite frankly, at the risk of saying some pretty offensive and rude things, which leads to this conclusion. Remember, the Psalms are designed to teach us how to pray, and one of the things I've been saying is that prayer isn't, first and foremost, about right theology, but rather it's about radical honesty. It's about showing up with God and being honest. One of the things that's been so encouraging for me over the past several weeks is every single week of this sermon series. No joke, I've had someone come up to me and share something in their life that they've sort of been stiff arming, not being honest with God. And as they've brought that into God's presence, they've experienced breakthrough and a closer relationship with God. And so for those of you who have been leaning in, just know I'm proud of you, and I want you to keep going. Today, I want to talk to you about what it looks like to be honest with God when you sin. When you mess up and you make a mistake and you know it, and then you're sort of swimming in that pool of guilt and shame that comes afterwards. What does it look like to be honest with God in that space? Growing up, my dad was a very strict disciplinarian. Um he was sort of a James Dobson dare to discipline guy, if that's a you understand that reference. Okay, so um I want to be clear, I never felt unloved, okay? I always felt loved, but he was very firm, very strict, often to a fault. Um you didn't want to get in trouble. Um that was sort of a fear of God moment. So you didn't want to get in trouble. And when you did, like the worst thing you could do was uh lie about it or try to cover it up. Because now you don't have two, you don't have just one problem, you have two problems. You have whatever you did that was wrong, and then the second problem, which is you lied about it and tried to cover it up. So this was in the seventh grade. I come home from school and my dad's waiting for me, and he looks kind of upset, and he confronts me about a hole in the garage wall. Um and so we go out to the garage, and to be honest, it was more of a dent than a hole. Like a hole felt like an exaggeration, I'm just gonna say that. But it was like this little dent, and um, and it was about the size of a hockey puck. And it had some like black mark around it, and so and I had a hockey net outside in the driveway, okay? So he's assuming that I uh put the dent slash hole in the garage wall. And here's the thing, you guys, I didn't do it. Honest to God, it wasn't me. Um my hockey net faced away from the house, and that is the only direction that I shot pucks. I never shot Pucks at or near the house. I didn't do it. So I told him I didn't do this, which didn't go well because now there's this dissonance of, well, someone did this, and I need to figure out who so I can punish them, right? Fast forward eight or nine years later. It's July 7th, 2005. Okay? It is the night before Josie and I get married, and we're at the groom's dinner. Now, my family, we love toasts, okay? We take toasting very seriously. We love a well-crafted toast slash roast, okay? We could have started Toastmasters and made a fortune. We're good at these, okay? So during our groom's dinner, my older sister Anna, the one right above me, gets up to give her toast slash roast. And partway through her toast, she starts this confession. She starts confessing to the dent slash hole in the garage wall. She had just gotten her license, just gotten her license, and apparently had been pulling into the garage and went too far and hit the wall. And she knew that if she fessed up to it, she wouldn't be able to drive the car anymore, at least that's what she assumed. So she took a hockey puck and colored in around the edges to make it look like it was me. And her toeslash roast crescendoed. It was so brilliant. She had us on the edge of our seats, and she crescendoed with, it was me. And of course, everybody was dying laughing. It only took eight or nine years to admit it. You guys, I think this is all of us, right? We have a public self. I've said this before. We have a public self. This is who we present ourselves to be to the to the world at large. We project onto the world how we want other people to perceive us. But underneath that, we have a private self. And um, that's who we are with our closest friends and family. This is also where the law of involuntary self-disclosure takes over because they see our faults and our flaws. You can't hide them forever. And then underneath that, so you've got your public self, your private self, but then deep under that, you also have your secret self. And this is the part of you that you work really hard to hide. Only you know about that, that side of you, that part of you, and God. And I'll tell you, not all of it is bad. Okay? I know people who part of their secret selves is it's their hopes and their dreams that they're too scared to say out loud because then they have to pursue them, right? So it's not all bad, but some of it is. Some of it is our ongoing struggles and sins and things of that sort that we we desperately want to hide and we don't want other people to see. We work really hard to keep these parts of ourselves hidden. And this is actually just part of our human condition, part of the response to the parts about ourselves we don't like. I want to show you this. This is Genesis 3, uh, six through thirteen. Right after Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it says this When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and she ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked, so they sowed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to them, Where are you? He answered, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid. Then he said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? The man said, The woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it. Then the Lord God said to the woman, Was what uh what is this you have done? The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate. When we sin, we tend to hide and blame. This is what Adam and Eve uh do. They eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and what do they do? They hide. They hide from God, and then they hide from one another. They sow fig leaves to cover themselves, and then they blame. Adam blames God and Eve, the woman you gave me, she gave me the fruit from the tree, and then Eve blames the serpent. We hide and we blame. I remember when my oldest son Tig got his uh Chromebook in the third grade, which by the way is too early, okay? No third grader should be walking around with a personal laptop. That's ridiculous. So he gets this computer, much to our distress, and sure enough, he gets busted for using it the wrong way. We get a call from the principal. He had created a Word doc and put some sort of an image there, it really was just like a kid's thing, but then he sent it to a few friends through the Google thing, and so he got busted. So we sit down with him later on that night at our kitchen table, and we're like, hey bro, did you create this image and then Google will send it to your friends? And he's like, Nope. Wasn't me. And so I get his little Chromebook out. I'm like, here's the bummer, dude. Uh Google tracks everything you did so I can see when you created it. I can see the image you put in there, all the little edits you made, when you sent it to your friends. He continued to hold his ground. Wasn't me. I mean, at one point it got so ridiculous he blamed his little brother, Kieran, uh, of stealing his password, creating this document, and then sending it to his friends just to get him in trouble. He held his ground for like 45 minutes until finally he cracked and admitted it. It was awful. This is what we do when we mess up. We tend to hide and blame. And I want to name that hiding and blaming is counterproductive. It's counterproductive for several reasons, but one of them is because God already knows and comes looking for us, anyways. Whatever it is you've done, and no matter how bad it is, God already knows about it. God already knows. And so there's really no use in trying to hide it. Trying to hide the junk in your life from God is sort of like my son Griffin playing hide and seek, okay? Griffin loves hide and seek, but he sucks at it. He is absolutely horrible. Um, here's how it looks we always start in the living room and we say, okay, buddy, go hide. And then we start to count. He is not a quiet walker. He stomps everywhere. He's very flat-footed, so you can hear where he's running, okay? And then he has no um sort of uh variance in where he hides. He hides in the same spot every time, which is in the middle of his room, and his attempt to hide is just to close the door. And he thinks it's so funny, so he sits in the living room, uh in the middle of his room with the door closed, giggling really loud, until we go in there and uh pretend to be surprised, right? This is what it's like when we try to hide our junk from God. Like God knows where we're hiding, He can see it and hear it a mile away. He knows. God not only sees and knows already, but notice how God responds to Adam and Eve. In verse 9, it says, But the Lord God called to the man, where are you? The butts in the Bible are the best. The Bible has the buts, the best butts, because it often talks about how we mess up, and then when it describes what God does next, it always starts with a butt. But the Lord God called to the man, Where are you? So Adam and Eve just got done eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, something God told them not to do. They're now in hiding, they're running away from God. And what does God do? God responds by looking for them. And he calls out in Hebrew, this is one word, I tah, where are you? This is a search and rescue call. This is God going on the look, the lookout for Adam and Eve. He's calling out to them with grace and mercy and love and forgiveness. This is God's heart and posture toward us when we mess up. Yes, sin breaks relationship with God. But if Genesis 3 tells us anything, it's that sin doesn't separate God from us, but rather it separates us from God. We're the ones who run away, we're the ones who go into hiding. God does the opposite. God comes looking for us, chasing after us with his mercy and his grace. And of course, the ultimate proof of this, you guys, is the good news of Jesus, the incarnation. The entire world had gone astray. And what does God do? God takes on flesh and moves toward us to forgive us, to reconcile us, and redeem us. This is also, by the way, why Jesus had zero problem hanging out with sinners. In fact, when you read the Gospels, it's interesting, it seems like sinners wanted to hang out with Jesus. So why is it that when we sin and we mess up, we don't want anything to do with Jesus, we run away, rather than uh moving toward Jesus to receive his grace, his forgiveness, his renewal. So look, I want to name that hiding from God is counterproductive because God knows, anyways, and he's chasing after us with his grace and his forgiveness. But there's another thing that hiding does that's counterproductive. And we're gonna get into the Psalms here because the Psalms beautifully illustrate this. But the second thing is this dodging our sin is detrimental to our well-being. Okay, so this is another reason why hiding is counterproductive. It's counterproductive because when we dodge our sin, it's detrimental to our health and our well-being. Genesis 3 reveals our instinct, what we do when we mess up. We go into hiding. But here's where we're gonna get into the Psalm. Psalm 32 names the cost to us when we do that. While also naming the freedom that comes when we choose something different. So here's Psalm 32. We're gonna look at the first few verses, and David is writing here. Here's what he says Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered, blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them, and whose spirit is no deceit, in whose spirit there is no deceit. So David is starting here by naming the state of blessing that comes when we fully disclosed all of our sins and faults to God and experience his forgiveness and grace. He's describing that state of blessing when we've got nothing to hide and we're living in a state of forgiveness. But then he contrasts that state with when we choose something different. So here's verses three through five. He says, When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me. My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin. So let's walk through this. Notice David starts by saying, Hey, when I kept silent about my sin. Silence here is about concealment. When I tried to conceal my wrongdoing. And what David names is this attempt to conceal his wrongdoing damaged him from the inside out. Unconfessed sin started to eat away at him. Hiding doesn't make the junk in our lives go away. It's still there. And the guilt of that begins to move into our bodies. Notice how David describes it. He says, My bones wasted away. I was groaning all day long, he says. So the point is that when we hide our sin, it doesn't go away. It metabolizes into pain and heartache. It dehydrates us spiritually. It saps us. And what's more is God doesn't let us off the hook. David says that when I did this, God's heavy hand remained on me. God's heavy hand continued to uh press in on me. Now notice this isn't God punishing David. You guys, God doesn't like punish sin. The built-in consequences of sin is in the sin itself. When you mess up, when you make a mistake, the intrinsic consequences are built into the sin itself. So God doesn't need to punish because sin already punishes you. Nor is this about condemnation. This is about conviction. God's heavy hand is a persistent convicting presence in David's life. And then David, we see, responds to God's conviction by acknowledging whatever wrongdoing he had done. He says, I acknowledged it. I did not cover it up anymore. He said, I will confess. I'll confess it. And what happens? God forgives him. God forgives him. David experiences God's forgiveness. And notice he also experiences the relief that comes when you have God's forgiveness. You ever anticipated something that you felt like was going to be awful or really hard, and then you get it over with, and there's just this sense of relief, like maybe a difficult test when you were in school, or I don't know, maybe a tough conversation you have with a have to have with a friend or family member, and then you finally get over it and you just breathe this sigh of relief. This is what it feels like to just acknowledge what God already knows about. You not only receive God's forgiveness, but you can breathe a sigh of relief. This is the point of Psalm 32. And we don't like this because we don't like acknowledging the junk in our lives. But hiding our sin prolongs pain, you guys. We're just kicking it down the road and making it worse. It intensifies our guilt. Concealment ends up trapping us and making us sick. As long as we hide and conceal our wrongdoing, it weighs on us, it weighs us down and it afflicts us. But when we face our wrongdoing, when we bring it into God's presence, trusting that God is who God says He is, then we get to receive the forgiveness that's been available to us all along and deepen our sense of God's love for us and our love for God. We experience the relief of that weight being lifted as forgiveness washes over us. So here's our bottom line for today. It's simply this that God invites us to bring all of our guilt into his merciful presence. All of your guilt, all of your shame, you bring it right into God's merciful presence. This is such good news. It's the invitation at the center of the gospel that you don't need to hide or conceal or cover up. You don't need to do any of that. There's no reason to because God already knows, anyways, and loves you, and he's waiting for you. He's actually chasing you down with his redeeming grace, wanting to extend forgiveness to you. If you want to know God's heart towards you, even in your worst moment, read Luke 15. It's the parable of the two lost sons, the younger son who uh basically ruins his life, and uh when he hits rock bottom comes home. This is a picture of how God meets us when we've messed up. Despite the fact that we're covered in poop, he he runs out to meet us and throws his arms around us and restores our dignity. This is who God is a God who runs out to meet us even when we're a mess. Psalm 103 puts it this way the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will Nor will he harbor his anger forever. He does not treat us as our sins deserve, or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far he has removed our transgressions from us. This is good news. God is compassionate and gracious. This is who God is. He's compassionate and gracious. He's slow to anger. He's abounding in loving kindness. And through the cross, he extends forgiveness to us. He does not treat us as our sins deserve. Colossians 2 says he's canceled out our sin. As far as the East is from the West, that's how far God has removed our sin from us, even when we didn't deserve it. This is the good news. But it's also hard news. It's also hard news because it means we have to stop dodging ourselves. And that's hard. I want to show you a brief clip because I think this is how most of us respond when we see something in our lives that we don't like. Take a look at this clip. Right? We're like that bear. We look at the mirror and we don't like what we see, and so we attack the mirror, right? Facing the ugly parts of our lives, it's not easy. It's really difficult. It's uncomfortable. But in order to find relief from those messy parts in our lives, we need to be willing to endure that discomfort, which is why so many people don't do it. This is what Robert Downey Jr. calls hugging the cactus. If you've been part of a leadership intensive, you've probably heard this language before, maybe even seen this video. I want to show you another brief clip. Uh, this is of Robert Downey Jr. introducing uh um Mel Gibson at an award show, and it's shortly after Mel Gibson kind of made a mess of his life. Drunk driving, um being under the influence, anti-Semitic remarks. And this is uh this is Robert Downey Jr. sort of introducing him. I will warn you, there was one sort of uh bad word we had to uh um mute out. If you're still offended by even muting it out, just put your muffs on and I'll see you in about two minutes. Okay, here we go.

SPEAKER_00: 24:45

Actually, I asked Mel to present uh this award to me for a reason. Because when I couldn't get sober, he told me not to give up hope and he urged me to find my faith. Uh uh didn't have to be his or anyone else's as long as it was rooted in forgiveness. And I couldn't get hired, so he cast me in the lead of a movie that was actually developed for him and he kept a roof over my head, and he kept food on the table. And most importantly, he uh said that if I accepted responsibility for my wrongdoings and if I embraced that part of my soul that was ugly, uh hugging the cactus, he calls it. He said that if I hugged the cactus long enough, uh I'd become a man of some humility and that my life would take on a new meaning. And I did, and it worked. Um all he asked in return was that uh someday I helped the next guy in some small way. Uh it's reasonable to assume that at the time he didn't imagine the next guy would be him. Or that someday was tonight. So anyway, on the special occasion and in light of the recent holidays, including Columbus Day, I humbly asked that you join me unless you are completely without spin, in which case you picked the wrong industry. In forgiving my friend his trespasses, offering him the same clean slate you have made, and allowing him to continue his great and ongoing contribution to our collective art without shame. He took the cactus long enough.

SPEAKER_01: 26:40

Right, so there's this backstory. Robert Downey Jr. hits rock bottom, Mel Gibson is there to provide a home for him, to help him get back on his feet, and he teaches him this lesson. You have to hug the cactus, you have to uh look at those ugly parts in your life. The um the dark parts of your soul. And in so doing, that's the only way you'll learn to take responsibility. It'll be humbling, you'll learn humility, and hopefully you'll come out the other end with some kind of character, new character. And I think this captures really well what it feels like to sort of confront the parts of ourselves we don't really like. It's uncomfortable. It's like hugging a cactus. It hurts, it's not fun, we'd rather avoid it. But when we do it, that's where we grow. Hugging the cactus is an essential part of our spiritual growth as disciples of Jesus. And what's more is that God gives us the grace to do it. Because there's nothing that can separate us from his love. God's unconditional love for us is what gives us the courage to hug the cactus, to confront those broken parts in our lives, and to encounter his forgiveness afresh. God's forgiveness is not limited. But I think our experience of it is. Your experience of God's forgiveness for you will be limited to how honest you are about the wrong stuff you've done in life. Part of the reason why we don't experience God's forgiveness is because we're not bringing what we need forgiveness for into God's presence. But the moment you do that, you'll experience the depth of God's forgiveness and love toward you. This is why the more honest we are about sin, the more deeply we experience God's love. Why? Because it's only as you recognize all the ways you've messed up and experience the truth that God is still with you and for you that you'll realize the depth of his love for you no matter what. You guys, this is why most recovery programs, um, a key component of it is naming the wrong you've done. Like in AA, it's the fourth step, a ruthless moral inventory. And I've done it. You have to write down all the stuff, all the sins you've ever committed. I did this, I've shared this before. I did this on a retreat about five years ago. I was at a silent retreat, and I spent almost an entire day writing down all the sins that I could remember in my life. And it was scary, and there were parts of it that weren't fun. But I'll tell you, it was one of the most intimate encounters I've ever had with Jesus. Because I sat with Jesus, knowing he knew it all already. In fact, he was there each moment that I was about to describe in detail, and he was sitting with me, giving me the courage to do it, saying, I love you each step of the way. There's a direct correlation between your experience of God's love, intimacy with God, in your brokenness, in your brokenness. And you'll only experience that when you stop running away from it, and rather run toward God in the middle of it. I want to close today by providing a roadmap for you with regard to how to pray when you've messed up, when you've made a mistake. Psalm 32 is a great example. There's other psalms like Psalm 51 is probably the most famous one. That's where David goes to God after he abused and mistreated Bathsheba and murdered her husband. But drawing on some of those Psalms, here's some steps for you. The first step is this you confess it. You confess it. This should be pretty straightforward. You simply name the full truth of whatever you did without excuse or without some kind of spin. It's straightforward, but it tends to be hard for us, and the reason why is because we have to stop hiding and blaming and minimizing and deflecting. But this is what the first step requires bringing everything we've done right into God's presence. God, here's what happened. Here's what I did, here's where I turned away from you. You just name it. Here's, here's, here it is. The second step is you lament it. Now, lamenting it isn't berating ourselves or rubbing salt in the wound. It's not self-flagellation, it's simply sitting with the consequences of our choices. The impact that our choices had on God. God, how did this impact my relationship with you? On others? How did my choices impact those around me and myself? And you sort of name here's the impact, and you sit with that and you grieve it. When we mess up, it's not just isolated to us, it ripples out to the people around us. God, I see how this grieves you. God, I see how this hurt the people around me. God, I see how this was destructive to me in my own life. So you confess it, you lament it, then you receive forgiveness. Notice the word receive. You can't earn it. All you can do is receive it. But this is a step where you say, God, will you forgive me? And you just sit in Jesus' presence, allowing him to speak his words of forgiveness over you. And let that be the word to yourself. I encounter a lot of people who want God to forgive them and they'll receive God's forgiveness, but then they go on and refuse to forgive themselves. You guys, that's so silly. If God forgives you, don't undo his forgiveness by refusing to forgive yourself. So at this step, you receive God's forgiveness, and you allow that forgiveness to penetrate your heart, to penetrate your life so that you can forgive yourself as well. And then you end with this step. You recommit yourself to Jesus. We end by reaffirming our allegiance to Jesus. This isn't about perfection. You're not going to be perfect moving forward, neither will I. You're going to continue to make mistakes, which is why hugging your cactus is something you got to do until you end up in a pine box, okay? This is just part of it. But at this point, we're we're naming the intention of our heart. God, I want, Jesus, I want to be faithful to you. I don't want to go back to this thing I just got done asking for forgiveness from. I want to move forward aright. I want to move forward in a way that honors you. Here's what I'm going to do. So you confess it, then you lament its impact. You receive God's forgiveness, and then you recommit to how you're going to move forward. Um, here are your action steps as we leave today. Um, I want you to create some prayerful space. Here's some prayer questions for you to reflect on with Jesus. How did I experience mistakes and wrongdoings in my first formation? What was it like when you messed up as a kid? Again, I'll just tell you, as a pastor, I often ask people this question, and the way they experience messing up as a kid is often how they assume God relates to them when they mess up today. You've got to become aware of this. Secondly, where am I most tempted to hide? Uh, from God and others or blame, right? When am I most tempted to hide and blame? And then is there anything I'm hiding right now that I need to acknowledge? And then your practice for this week is just to take something in your life, something that's imperfect that you've been running from, and write a lament. Write it out. Confess it, lament it, receive forgiveness, and then recommit yourself to Jesus.