Joyce Meyer - How Do I Overcome Guilt? (08/18/2019)
This sermon addresses how guilt and condemnation trap believers, preventing spiritual growth. It emphasizes that our right standing with God is a gift of imputed righteousness through Christ, not based on our performance. The key to freedom is understanding who we are in Christ and that God has already placed seeds of His character, like love and self-control, within us through the Holy Spirit.
The Trap of Guilt and Condemnation
Today I want to talk to you about how guilt and condemnation trap us and keeps us in the same place. And so we feel guilty about the things that we're doing wrong. But then as long as we're in that guilt, we can never really stop doing them and make progress. In order to grow spiritually, we must learn who we are in Christ. That by his great amazing grace and mercy, he has not only forgiven all of our sins, but he has given us his very own righteousness. We have right standing with God legally because of the blood of Christ, even though we still do things wrong.
So imputed righteousness is a gift from God that then enables us to learn how to walk in that right standing and gradually, over a period of time, do more and more and more things right because we've been given righteousness. God never expects us to produce something that he doesn't give us a seed of that first in our lives. How could God possibly tell us to be patient if he didn't put a seed of patience in us? We have no ability unless God gives us that. How could he possibly tell us to walk in peace in the troubled world that we live in if he didn't give us a seed of peace?
What You Already Have in Christ
And I think it's very important for people to understand, as a believer, what you already have the moment that you're born again. I mean, God downloads seeds of his own character into our spirit. We have God living on the inside of us. And the Bible says that we have the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Not an unholy spirit, but the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Love. You have an ability to love people, and I do too. Joy. Our joy does not have to be based on our circumstances. We can have a joy that's found only in God.
Peace. Patience. All these wonderful fruit of the Spirit. Self-control. What do you think about that one? Humility. Meekness. So there's no point in going around saying, "I can't control myself," because we do have self-control. We might say, "I don't want to control myself," or "I'm not strong enough yet to control myself." But we need to confess, and I believe in doing it out loud, what we already have as a gift from God. I am the righteousness of God in Christ. I am patient. Well, you say, no, you're not. Well, but I am. In here, I am, and I'm just working with God to get it from in here to out here, where it can actually do somebody some good. So you are fully loaded and equipped to be a dynamic influence in the world today. You just have to believe it. Believe it. And so this guilt thing is a trap.
It's so interesting to me, the people that God chooses. How could Paul ever have gotten over feeling guilty? Somebody mentioned this morning, it's possible that he was teaching the children of people that he helped arrange for their murder. Try to get over that.