August 27, 2023 |
Psalm 32:1-5 |
recovery
Full Transcript Available
We want to please God, but still have sin areas that cause us to feel guilty and defeated or past sin areas that we still feel guilty about. This robs us of living the blessed life, the happy life.
What is guilt? It’s that feeling of shame and regret we feel over a sinful attitude or behavior. It can be appropriate guilt when we are indeed responsible for an offense and feel remorse for it. Or it can be false guilt when we feel responsible for something that we had no control over, yet still feel we could’ve prevented in some way. Guilt feels heavy, like baggage that we carry with us. It fills us with shame and regret.
Some will try to help us deal with our guilt by trying to convince us that we shouldn’t feel guilty. But the Bible tells us that the reason we feel guilty is because we are guilty! But it also tells us how to give it to God! In David’s Psalm 32, he described how confessing his guilt led to living under God’s blessing. We can understand how confessing our guilt leads to living under God’s blessing.
August 20, 2023 |
Psalm 27:1-11 |
recovery
Full Transcript Available
Jesus says that gentleness is the path to greatness and that meekness is the path to blessing. Yet meekness is probably one of the least admired qualities in America. We admire strength, not humility. We admire those who take charge, not those who surrender control to God. This might partly be because we don’t understand what meekness is.
In David’s Psalm 37, he instructed the people of God that living meekly, surrendering control to God, leads to a life of blessing. We can surrender our control to God to experience His blessing.
August 13, 2023 |
Matthew 5:4, John 11:17-44 |
beatitudes, grief, recovery
Full Transcript Available
For many of us, we don’t know how to grieve. We don’t know how to mourn. So, we just bottle it up. We deny it. Or we try to medicate it with booze, or pills, or overeating, or over-working, or materialism or… But the pain remains. Unresolved grief can cause us to give up on happiness.
The blessed life, the supremely happy life, is ours when we are willing to admit that we’re powerless to change, to overcome our hurts, habits, and hangups. And that we need to mourn, grieve, and trust Jesus as the only One truly able to comfort and heal us. In the gospel of John, Jesus called those who were grieving the death of Lazarus to believe in Him as the only One who could truly comfort their grief and turn their mourning into blessing. We can release our grief to Jesus to receive His comfort.
August 6, 2023 |
Matthew 5:1-3; Romans 7:15-25 |
beatitudes, recovery
Full Transcript Available
We all have problems. We have hurts, habits, and hangups that we can’t overcome. It’s like something inside of us is broken and it leaves us powerless to change. We’re held captive and can’t get free!
How are you doing at overcoming these hurts, habits, and hangups? For most of us, no matter how hard we try, we find ourselves powerless to break free, so we continue to be held captive by them.
The apostle Paul wrote about these feelings of brokenness, of feeling powerless to change. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he described how admitting our brokenness can move us toward God’s blessing. We can see how admitting our brokenness can move us toward God’s blessing.
