Gregory Dickow - Healed of the Disease Called GUILT
I want to talk to you a little bit about healing the disease of guilt, healing the disease of guilt before I do, I just want to one more. I want to say one more thing about mothers, because mothers are so smart. Mothers are the smartest. They're the smartest of God's creation. I think we can all say amen to that. Come on, ladies. Come on. Mama's right. You say, how do you know that? The statistics show that. Yeah, this statistic. A little girl asked her mother, Mom, how did the human race appear? Where did we come from? The mother answered, Well, well, darling, God created Adam and Eve and they had children and their children had children, so we all came from them. Two days later, the little girl asked her father the same question. The father responded well.
Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved and we all came from them. The confused girl returned to her mother a couple of days later and said, Mama, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God? But Dad told me that we came from monkeys. The mother answered, Oh, darling, that's so simple. I shared with you about my side of the family. He shared with you about his. So smart mothers, you are so smart and so biblically accurate and so right and so godly, we honor you today, but up but come on, give him another hand. We just love you so much. Revelation, revelation, chapter 12, Revelation, Chapter 12, verse 10, we're going to start there and it says, Then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying now salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ have come. And the accuser of our brethren who accuses them before our God day and night has been cast down.
The accuser who accuses them day and night has been cast down or one translation says has been thrown down or has been hurled down. The accuser, the accuser. My gift to you today is this teaching on how God wants us to be healed from the disease of guilt. Being accused continually is what many of us have been subjected to, because Satan is a Satan is an accuser. In fact, the word the word devil comes from the it comes from the Greek word Diablos. And everybody who speaks Spanish knows that devil in Spanish is diabolo.
It comes from the Greek word Diablo's, which comes from two words dieser, which means to penetrate, to enter into which like the diameter of something is where we get the word is we get the word diameter from this word dhiya, which means to penetrate and the word BOLO's, which means to throw at or to hurl accusations at or to throw something at, in this case, accusations to throw at it until it penetrates you put these two words together and Barlas, which is where we get the word ball from to throw a ball, we get the word ball from BOLO's, which means to throw at and which means to penetrate. So this is how this is what this is what Satan consists of.
This is what the devil consists of. He throws accusations that you day and night, day and night, day and night until he penetrates your soul. And there he releases explosive power through the power of guilt, condemnation and accusation. And so if we can attack that guilt today, if we can deal with guilt the way Jesus intended us to, if we can take this these accusations captive and learn how to overcome the accuser of the brethren and the accusations that come from hell. But isn't it funny? Because if you learn how to overcome these accusations, that's when you're going to walk in such freedom and joy. And nothing robs us of joy more than guilt. Nothing robs us of effectiveness, more than guilt. Nothing robs us of peace, of mind more than guilt. Nothing makes us more anxious and depressed. More then guilt.
Guilt is an insidious demonic force that wants to beat you down and beat you up one side and down the other until you start beating yourself up so he can move on to somebody else. That's what Diablo does. That's what Diablo's does. That's what the accuser does. And it's time to throw him down. It says the accuser has been thrown down. He's been thrown down. He's been thrown down. And how has he been thrown down? Look at verse eleven. He's been thrown down. They overcame him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony. And they were not in love with their lives. They were in love with Jesus, not their soul life. They were in love with Jesus life, not their life. And that's why that's how they were able to throw down the accuser of the brethren. Jesus threw him down.
And now we continue to remind him that he's down and don't let him back up in our heads. Don't let him back up in your business. Don't let him back up in your mind. Don't let him back up in your heart. Don't let him accuse you day and night, because that's what he does. But it's time that we learn how to walk in. Victory over the accusations, the guilt and the condemnation that comes from the pit of hell comes from diabolo himself. Hey, it's time for us to walk in the joy and the happiness and the peace that comes from living a guilt free life. I don't know about you, but, you know, there are some foods that are advertised sometimes like guilt free, right? Guilt free, this guilt free, that guilt free sugar guilt. I want some guilt free potato chips. How about you?
I want some guilt. I want some guilt free Doritos. I want to come on now. I want some I want guilt free food. I don't want to live in guilt another day of my life. And Jesus doesn't want me to either. And he doesn't want you to either. Come on, somebody say amen to that. Anyone know what it's like to feel accused day and night? Come on now, don't say, yeah, I'm married to him, don't say yeah, I'm. The voice of accusation becomes so familiar to us that it actually sounds like we're saying it to ourselves and it sounds like our voice, Satan disguises himself with our voice until in our minds we are accusing ourselves. And Satan's not even having to do anything about it because you're doing a good enough job by yourself that he doesn't even need to mess with your mind anymore because he's got because he's got you thinking like him thoughts like how about this?
You never do enough. You don't say the right things. You don't measure up, you don't get it all done. You don't do enough for your children, for your parents, for others. You don't do as much for others as they do for you. You always seem to blow it when you seem to be making progress. You say things you regret. You get angry too easily. You think bad thoughts, you don't have the right clothes. Eat too much. You don't exercise enough. You don't pray enough. You don't read enough. You don't serve enough. Anybody heard any of those thoughts before? And they stop coming in the form of you don't do enough and they start coming in the form of I don't do enough, I don't measure up. I don't I don't have the right things. I don't I'm not good enough. I say things I regret. I get angry easily. And you begin to agree with these accusations until you are so weighed down with guilt that it brings you into actually a place of depression and sadness and ineffectiveness in life.
And if we could throw down this guilt once and for all, we could experience real freedom, the freedom Jesus paid for us to have, and we could experience a peace that passes understanding and a joy unspeakable and full of glory. That's the life that God has for you. God doesn't want you being guilty and beating yourself up about your mistakes, about your past, about what you've done, about what others have done to you. Listen. And Satan is a manipulator, and he uses people to manipulate us through guilt. And it's really a form of really manipulation as a form of witchcraft. And it's it's done through guilt. People sell us things with guilt. People get us to apologize through guilt. People get us to do what they want through guilt. And we've got to stop being manipulated by guilt.
It's, in fact, a 13 year old Girl Scout was asked how she was able to sell eleven thousand. She broke the record at the time. She sold eleven thousand two hundred boxes of cookies, Girl Scout cookies, eleven thousand two hundred boxes of cookies. And they asked her, how were you so successful at selling these cookies? And she said, oh, it's really simple. You got to look him in the eye when they open the door, you got to look him in the eye and make him feel guilty. Because we're so accustomed to feeling guilty, because we know how flawed we are, that we allow guilt to control us and we allow guilt to influence our decisions so that we can feel like we've paid for our guilt. But we don't have to pay a cent for our guilt. We don't have to pay a second for our guilt because Jesus already paid for it in its entirety so that we can live a guilt free life. No matter what you feel like, no matter how many mistakes you've made, no matter how far you've fallen short, you can live a life where you're not guilty.
And by the way, when you live a life of freedom from guilt, you're going to be able to pray with power. Because what keeps us what keeps us from being able to pray with authority and power is condemnation. In fact, if you look at this verse first, John, chapter three, verse 20 and 21 for four, heart condemns us. He says God is greater than our heart and knows all things verse 21. But if our heart does not condemn us, then we have confidence towards God. Listen what he says, beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, then we have confidence before God. But he's not saying if you don't sin, then you can have confidence toward God. He's saying if your heart doesn't condemn you, then you have confidence towards God. Because even if I fall, even if I fail, even if I stumble, I don't have confidence today because I'm holy.
I have confidence today because I am the righteousness of God in Christ. That's what gives me confidence, and if I fall or stumble, it doesn't change the fact that I'm the righteousness of God, but religious preaching has doomed us to be a byproduct of our behavior. And God wants us to understand our behavior is a byproduct of what we believe. Believe right, live right, living right is the reflex of believing, right, if your heart does not condemn you. Then you have confidence before God, so back to Revelation 12 and 10, talking about the accuser of the Brethren, Satan wants to accuse you continually. Satan wants to make you feel bad continually. And we make decisions because we feel bad. And we've got to stop making decisions because we feel that we've got to stop making decisions to alleviate our guilt.
We have to realize Jesus alleviates our guilt through his blood, through his precious, precious blood, not through our behavior. Just like the guy like the guy who who who wrote to the IRS, dear IRS enclosed, you will find my my money order for one hundred and fifty dollars. You see, I cheated on my taxes, my income tax returns, a money order. I cheated on my income tax return last year and have not been able to sleep ever since. If I still have trouble sleeping, I will send you the rest of what I owe you. Sincerely, sincerely, a taxpayer. We got to get a hold of this, folks. Why do people feel guilty because of our past? Because we make promises that we don't end up keeping, because we're not living up to our standards, because we're not living up to other standards, we're not living up to God's standards.
So we feel guilty or we owe someone something that we can't pay. So we feel guilty. You know, the best thing you can do if you ever want to end a relationship is loan somebody money. Because. Because as soon as you loan it to them and they can't pay you, they will disappear from your life. So you ever want to get rid of somebody who's loaning money? But people feel guilty over that and people say something in anger they later regret. So we feel guilty about that. We feel guilty about being overweight. We feel guilty when we look at the scale. You know what? There's one simple solution to that. Get rid of your scale. You make you feel guilty because you don't finish your list, you feel guilty because you're not spending enough time with your children or you think you're not or you're not praying enough or you're not reading your Bible enough, or when you're reading the Bible, your Bible, the devil is telling you to pray more.
And when you start praying more, the devil tells you to read the Bible more. When you do in one, you feel guilty about not doing the other, or maybe you feel guilty because you have a messy house not doing enough for your children. Not finishing what? You start not taking enough time for yourself. We've got to realize these things, these things Satan uses, these normal natural things. None of us truly measure up to the perfect standard that we want to measure up to. And so we have to accept that we are humans. We have to accept that we are not flawed, flawless. We have to accept that we are going to make mistakes. We have shortcomings. It's not an excuse for them, but it's a reality that each of each and every one of us live in and we can't be free from guilt by being perfect. There's only one way to be free from guilt. Here it is. Are you?
Well, I'm going to show you three things to do to put an end to it, but I'm going to show you the path is right here. It starts right here in Hebrews, chapter ten, verse twenty two. And I want to read this to you from the new living translation Hebrew Chapter ten, verse twenty two. Let us go. Right. Paul, the writer of or the writer of Hebrews we believe is Paul the Apostle. But he says Let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts, fully trusting him, for our guilty conscience has been sprinkled clean. Our guilty conscience is have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean and our bodies have been washed with pure water.
Notice what he says are our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean. He doesn't say our guilty consciences have been sprinkled by our confession to make us clean. He doesn't say a confession makes us clean. He doesn't say our apology makes us clean. Listen, he doesn't say that our holiness makes us clean. He doesn't say that our good works make us clean. I'm not saying that we should live on holy. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do good works. But none of those things cleanse you from a guilty conscience. He says only one thing cleanses the cleanses us from a guilty conscience, the blood of Jesus Christ. And listen, he only died once and he's never going to die again. He only died once for all so that he never has to die again. And he sprinkles us with his blood.
Now, I don't know about you, but I'm into sprinklers that get the job done. How about you? So sometimes we think of sprinkling us with his blood, sort of like, you know, like an infant baptism. You know, you just kind of dab the dab the kid's head with a few sprinkles of water. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. How many have ever seen one of those sprinklers? You know, those sprinklers that go like this? And, man, they can they will rip your feet right out from under you. You if you get real close to them, you know, those things go. All those things are powerful, and those sprinklers, man, they will appeal the paint off the wall, they will he will cleanse the wall, the color right off of your wall.
And that's how that's what I want you to envision. I don't want you to envision one of those summertime, you know, sprinklers like this, you know, the rainbow sprinklers that you kind of jump in. Right. And you jump through and it gets you really cold and you just jump right over it, you know, not the rainbow sprinkler. That ain't a real sprinkler. No, no, no. We weren't clans with some rainbow sprinkler. We were cleansed with this. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. Until it peels off the scene right off of you and peels off the condensation and all the guilt and all the shame and all your regrets and all of your mistakes and all your shortcomings and all that's left is you washed by the blood of the lamb was by the precious blood of Jesus and no longer have to live with a guilty conscience ever again.
I don't care what you've done. It is over. It is what you have been cleansed. The blood of Jesus is more powerful. I don't care what you say. I don't care what you say. You've done this very powerful. I cheated. I smoked. I drank, I. I killed. I did this. I did that. Let me tell you something. As bad as those things are, as powerful as those things are to condemn you forever. Jesus, blood is more powerful and it justifies you forever. It cleanses you forever and it makes you free from guilt forever. We have to stop thinking that our guilt somehow makes us feel better. It doesn't temporarily. When you go, oh, yeah, I feel guilty. I feel guilty. I feel really bad because here's what happens.
Parents have taught us some some some of us have had upbringings where our parents have taught us incorrectly by shaming us for doing something wrong until we feel bad enough for them to stop punishing us. What do you feel bad about it? Yes, I feel really bad about it. How bad do you feel about it? I don't. I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry. I don't ever want to do it again. What they're saying is they don't ever want to be punished like that again. It's not that they're not going to do it again, they're going to do it again. They're going to do it again, right? They're going to do it again, every one of us, if we raise children, every one of you know, even if you made your child feel really bad, which is wrong to make your child feel bad about what they've done, it's wrong to use guilt because what ends up happening is now they they live the rest of their life feeling like they have to feel bad in order to in order for life, not to punish them, because when they felt bad enough, it saved them from the punishment.
And that is guilt. That is manipulation. That is shame. And that's not how God raises his kids. That's not how God does things. You don't have to live in this guilt. You have to live in this condemnation. You don't have to pay the price. The price has already been paid. It's been paid in the blood of Jesus. He didn't come to bring guilt. He bore our guilt. He took our shame so that we didn't we would not have to be imprisoned by it any longer because guilt keeps you right where you are at.
And then and if you deny it, that keeps you right where you're at. Denial is is you giving yourself permission to stay the same when you deny that you've done anything wrong? We're not saying that we've never done anything wrong. We're saying by the blood of Jesus, he declares us not guilty. We have done plenty of things wrong and we might do some things wrong today, but Jesus still declares us not guilty. Why is that so important? Because if your heart does not condemn you, then you have confidence before God.