Losing the Weight of Guilt / Pastor Randy Goldenberg / FCF Church

``So confession, what is confession? It it it's taking responsibility. It's saying, God, I did this. I know it's wrong and I am sorry and and I don't I don't wanna do this anymore. I I know it was wrong. I don't wanna be that guy. I don't wanna be that girl. I this is not who I wanna be. So there's an intentionality woven into the confession. It is not blame shifting. It is not legitimizing. It's not making excuses. It's just saying, did it. There's no excuse for it. I'm wrong. But that's only step one. If we actually want to experience God's purifying work where he gets inside and he starts to change our very character, core formation of our character, well, that's where we gotta get to where where he can purify us. We have to confess what we did and then why we did it. [01:15:05] (49 seconds)  #ConfessAndTransform

``When we confess sin to remove guilt, our intention must be, I don't want to live this way anymore. Lord, look at me. Look at my heart. You know who I am. I do not want to break your will. I know your will is good. I know your word is precious. I know it's perfect. I know you know what's best for me, want what's best for me. I am not just confessing this so that I can then turn around tomorrow and do it again. I'm I'm not planning ever to do this again. My intentionality is to live like you live and love like you love and to be righteous. When a person is saying they are a follower of Christ and they're living in continuous sin as a pattern, I didn't say this. I didn't put this together. This is the spirit of God in first John. It says that person is deceived and they're a liar. So to really remove guilt, I have to have a repentant attitude. That is critical. [01:20:57] (58 seconds)  #TrueRepentance

So let's look at a few things right off the bat. We tend to do these things first. I don't know why, but we do. Common but inadequate attempts at guilt removal. First of all, when we're guilty of something and we know we know we maybe stepped over the line or something, we we tend to rationalize, hey, you know, well, so what? Everybody does it. It's not a big deal. It didn't hurt anybody, you know, or or we legitimize it. Hey, everybody's doing it today. It's a different time. It's a different world. It's nothing wrong with it. This is the way people feel today. Or we minimize it. Hey, nobody got hurt. I'm only hurting myself, so this doesn't have anything to do with anybody else or worse, we blame shift. You know, so I get angry and I take a ball peen hammer and I conk you on the head with it because you made me angry. That's ridiculous. Right? There's no there's no reason for me to hit you on the head with a ball peen hammer. [01:11:49] (48 seconds)  #NoMoreExcuses

The condition is, I, you, we must be willing to forsake our wicked ways and the promise is, god will abundantly pardon us when we forsake them. So to remove guilt, I've got to have a repentant attitude and intentionality. I'm not gonna continue to live this way. I want desperately look inside me. At my deepest level, we gotta be able to say to God, look at me. You know I love you. You know I love your righteousness. I want desperately to be obedient to you in every way because I trust you entirely and I'm a follow you freely, fully, and forever. That that that's gotta be a part of our confession or the removal of guilt won't be effective. [01:22:17] (41 seconds)  #ForsakeForForgiveness

``Therefore, my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus, the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. No matter what that person is saying, whether they branded you, you know, frozen you in time, that is not the way God sees you. He sees you as forgiven, as full of potential, and he wants you to live in that freedom. One last word. Here it is. This is God's word to you and to all of us. What I choose not to remember, he says, I remember their sins and their rebellious and their recklessness no more. What I choose to remember, I want you to do what? Choose real. We have to be willing to choose to forget what God refuses to remember. Does that make sense? I mean, if God yeah. Thank you. We all need this, and more than likely, we'll need it before this week is out. [01:30:47] (58 seconds)  #ChooseToForget

``It is even though it doesn't feel good. Right? Guilt is kinda like this. The the red lights on your dashboard, like like the oil light comes on in your car. Mean, it might be irritating, but if you take your hammer and smash it, you know, it's not gonna not gonna solve the thing. You're just gonna end up seizing your engine up. Okay? So the red lights are warning us. The red lights are trying to correct us. The red lights are trying to guard us. Guilt, particularly in the early stages, can prevent us from doing destructive things. But even after we've done the things, the guilt lights coming on, they help us to course correct quickly or at least that is the desire of them. So listen to this verse from second Corinthians chapter seven. [01:09:13] (47 seconds)  #GuiltAsWarning

``These are called sins of omission. We don't take those seriously enough. God has entrusted to us with a lot of power, a lot of wisdom, a lot of financial resources, a lot of time, a lot of talent, a lot of treasure, and he waits for us to invest these things spontaneously and joyfully on our own. But if we do not use these things, if we don't leisure leverage these things, that's a sin, but it's a sin that someone might commit that would not be a sin for someone else. A little confusing, but important to understand because our guilt doesn't always respond to sins of omission, needs to. We need to fine tune that conscience a little bit more to understand to whom like Jesus said, whom much is given, much is required. [01:08:16] (43 seconds)  #SinsOfOmission

``And today, we're gonna talk about losing the weight of guilt. That is weight you want to lose. So I said last week, we're gonna have a verse that we carry through this whole series. I hope perhaps some of you get it where it sort of absorbs, you know, whether you try to memorize it or not, it just kinda sinks in. But here's the verse and it talks about losing spiritual weight. It says Hebrews 12 verse one, therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, I said last week, if you read chapter 11 of Hebrews, it names the names of all these old testament followers of God and their faithfulness. That's the huge crowd of witnesses. [00:50:08] (40 seconds)  #Hebrews12One