Freedom from False Guilt

I was just thinking about guilt and what place it has in the Christian life if Jesus has really atoned for our sins on the cross. The word guilt has a few different usages, but I'm talking specifically about the feeling that arises within you when you have done something wrong or when you haven't done something you knew you should have.

I don't have so much trouble with former anymore, but the latter is trickier because there seems to be an infinite amount of things we COULD be doing. We COULD be doing more for the homeless. We COULD be giving more. We COULD be praying more. We COULD be better to our families.

Being a recent credentialed graduate of a Bible college, there is a great deal of pressure to "perform" because after gaining so much knowledge about how lost your friends/families are without Jesus, you feel like you're in sin if you're not swimming in the seas of everyone's burdens. This is especially hard if you have an overactive conscious. [That article gives some good illustrations of what that is.]

I was reading Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson and I came across something that God impressed upon him: "it's not about what you can do for Me, it's about what I have done for you." What a great reminder. You can spin yourself in circles forever with a list like "I could be doing this and that better..."

But that's a topic that is simply uninteresting to God.

Frankly, He doesn't give a rip what you can accomplish for Him with what little understanding you have. Many times I forget that what I do know of Truth, I have received from the Holy Spirit. So wouldn't it only make sense for ministry to be accomplish by the Holy Spirit instead of human effort?

If guilt is your motivation, then YOU receive the credit when you are done laboring because you were just trying to get out of a negative balance to begin with (some "credit" huh). Your goal of making yourself feel better is accomplished, and there is no need for more service until the balance once again becomes negative.

When service is done from a motivation of love, there was no deficit to begin with because faith in Jesus enables you to walk in righteousness. Your debt is paid so there's no guilt. When there is no deficit, and serving is done just to serve and loving done just to love, there are no limits except what the body can take. Jesus gets the credit for the ministry and what's more, its all done with PURE JOY.

Imagine that, a relationship with God that doesn't involve false guilt. I think that's more rare than it should be in most churches. In fact, the Church should be known for taking guilt away through good news, not for heaping more of it on people's shoulders. There is no greater gift than the gift of freedom, so why are we taking freedom from the very people we should be giving it to?

I'm done with that.

I'm sick of people with titles taking away my freedom (because someone has taken away their freedom in the past), and I'm sick of being made to think that I'm not helping people if I'm not trying to strip their freedom. That's not faith, and it's just wrong.