Humans spend much time and energy trying to bury their guilt, but humbly receiving and walking in Christ’s forgiveness is much more effective. Fully receiving and living in God’s forgiveness will greatly improve your mental health. Once you truly experience Christ’s forgiveness you’ll never be the same.

If you’re not convinced that you’re forgiven, you’ll keep doing things that heap more guilt on you. When you know your sins have been forgiven, you’re very careful to go and sin no more. To hold on to sin is embrace guilt and reject forgiveness.

Jesus died so you can be forgiven. To live in guilt is to miss out on His mercy. 1 John 1:9. Guilty feelings vanish when you’re convinced God has forgiven you. When you’re unsure guilty feelings will remain. There’s no delight in being dominated by deceitful desires; there is only guilt and bondage.

People love to say, “I’m a good person,” because most of us want people to think we are good, but our secret inner struggle with shame, sin, and guilt says that we’re not as good as we say we are. The Good News of forgiveness for and deliverance from sin doesn’t sound like good news to people who boast, “I’m a good person.”

Good people don’t need God’s forgiveness. Guilty people do. We’re all guilty of something! Good people don’t battle guilt because they don’t think, say, feel, or do the guilt producing things that the rest of us do.

Once we truly realize our badness, Jesus is no longer just a nice religious story. He’s the Good News who daily rescues us from our deception and bondage. I’ve always had a strong conscience and I’ve mostly obeyed it so I used to think that I was a good person, but following the risen Jesus has caused me to agree with Scripture: “O wretched man that I am!” “There is within me, that is within my flesh, no good thing.” Now I know that I desperately need Christ’s ongoing grace and mercy.

People who have experienced God’s forgiveness don’t want to live without it, so they quickly ask for it every time they give in to temptation. Every time you think, say, feel, or do something guilt producing, immediately resist it and ask God for forgiveness and freedom from it.

The Gospel (the Good News of freedom from spiritual bondage) is a threat to religion. Most of the religious leaders who knew about Jesus’ earthly ministry were threatened by Him, so they rejected His message and wanted Him dead. Throughout history religion has seemed to prefer a dead Jesus (or a Jesus restricted to Heaven) instead of an ongoing, personal, Spirit-led relationship with the living, present, and active Jesus.

Heaven is for the forgiven (not for the deserving) and God’s forgiveness is available for all who want it and will humbly receive it. To be a citizen of the kingdom of God is to let your mind, heart, and life be ruled by King Jesus. The more I realize the reality of Jesus the less I’m satisfied with religion. If church is “a hospital for sinners” why do so few of its “patients” openly admit that they are sinners who desperately need Christ’s ongoing forgiveness, healing, and deliverance?

Churchianity

From heel
To toe
Pride says no.
I might play
The part
To look good
In church,
But I'll not kneel
My heart
To Jesus.