Confessing Our Guilt
From Brokenness to Blessing

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Good morning church. I can’t think of a better introduction to our series that we’re continuing today entitled, “From Brokenness to Blessing.” We’re thankful for Ryan’s testimony because it illustrates perfectly what we’re talking about today as we go through the eight Beatitudes, found at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, the eight places where Jesus says, “Blessed are the…and then He fills in the blank. The one that we’re working on today is the fourth one: Matthew 5:6 (ESV) “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

The word, “blessing,” here has the idea of “being completely happy, completely content, happy to the max, blessed to the max.” Here, in this particular Beatitude, Jesus is saying that those whose greatest desire, their hunger and thirst is to be right with God. They are the ones who are truly satisfied, truly happy. Ryan’s testimony gave an example of this.

And as we look back over the past few weeks, we’ve covered the first three Beatitudes. If you think about it, they occur in sequential order, like steps. In week one, we said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Blessed are those who admit to themselves that they’re powerless to help themselves. They’re broken and they admit it. The second week was, “Blessed are those who mourn.” The Beatitude for releasing our grief to God. We mourn over it so that God can comfort us. The third week was the Beatitude, “Blessed are the meek.” We surrender our control to God, committing our way to Christ.

This week, we will study the Beatitude, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Those who want to be right with God, God satisfies. He deals with our guilt. He deals with their sin so that we’re able to live for Him. Guilt robs us of the blessed life, of the happy life.

What is guilt? It’s that feeling of shame; that feeling of regret that we feel when we have a sin attitude or behavior in our lives. There are two categories of guilt: One is appropriate guilt and the other is false guilt.

Appropriate guilt can actually be helpful to us because it spurs us on. When we’ve offended someone or hurt someone, we feel guilty and God can use that in us so that it moves us to reconcile and to confess.

False guilt is what we feel whenever something goes wrong and we feel responsible for it even though we didn’t have direct responsibility. Sometimes, we need to go to the Lord with that kind of guilt and He can help us clarify that. Maybe it really wasn’t your fault. We feel this way sometimes when we feel like we could have prevented a thing or something like that. That’s a false kind of guilt.

It doesn’t really matter whether it’s appropriate or false guilt, it all feels heavy. It feels like baggage on your shoulders. It wears you down and it fills you with shame and regret. You look back on an event and it’s like you can’t stop replaying it in your mind. It makes you feel embarrassed. It makes you think, “I wish that I could go back in time and get a “do over.” Remember what Ryan said? He said, “I never really knew how to deal with the baggage that I was carrying within.” He said, “The feelings I had, I just wanted to forget about it, but God wanted to deal with it. There was stuff I was holding on to inside like a big wound, but I wouldn’t let God touch it.” “As a result,” he said, “I didn’t grow. I never got healing as long as I was hanging on to it.” He said, “I think it was because I still felt ashamed and, ultimately, I found myself in a very dark place.” He said, “I didn’t even know if I wanted to be alive anymore.”

That’s how guilt will make you feel. It’ll drive you to this point of heaviness where you’ll even perhaps have suicidal thoughts. According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), “Guilt is a little-discussed but common symptom of depression.” Popular symptoms of clinical depression like anxiety, stress, grief, low self-esteem are well known. But guilt is one of those hidden symptoms of depression and unhappiness that people often don’t consider. It can lead us to unhappy places. You might know the feeling that guilt brings; that nauseating twist of the gut that you feel . Maybe it causes you to have a sleepless night; we’re all familiar with that. It has this recurring kind of self judgment where you’re talking to yourself and telling yourself you shouldn’t have done that.

The other thing is that feeling of shame leads to a sense of fear that causes us to want to hide the guilt to cover it up. Instead of doing the healthy thing of confessing, we end up hiding and concealing.

Psychiatrists say that probably 70% of the people in the hospital for clinical depression could leave today if they knew how to resolve their guilt. And unresolved guilt is an addiction trigger. It can keep us enslaved. We try to conceal it. We try to cover it up by medicating it with overeating, taking drugs, alcohol or some other behavior that we use as a coping skill in order to hide, you know , why we feel guilt.

An advisor, counselor or psychologist, although they mean well, will try to make you believe that you’re not guilty; you’re not really guilty and you should put away your feelings of guilt. You’re not guilty.

That’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says that you feel guilty because you are guilty. That’s what the Bible says. The Bible keeps on talking and says to confess it to God and He can take it off of you. Instead of concealing and denying guilt, confessing our guilt is the beginning of getting on the road to happiness, the road to blessing.

In David’s Psalm 32, he described how confessing his guilt led to living under God’s blessing. He lets us “look over his shoulder and read in his diary.” He helps us to understand what Jesus was saying in the fourth Beatitude because David was a man after God’s own heart. David was a man who hungered and thirst after being right with God, which is righteousness to be right with God.He described what it was like when he finally learned to confess his guilt to God and how God gave him blessing,happiness and forgiveness as a result.

As we look at Psalm 32 today, I think it’ll really help us to understand what Jesus said in the fourth Beatitude. It’ll help us understand how we can live a life of blessing under God by confessing our guilt. As we look at the text today, I think we’ll see three ways that we can live under God’s blessing by confessing our guilt. Let’s look at Psalm 32; we’ll read the first five verses.

Psalm 32:1-5 (ESV) 1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. 3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. 4 For day and nightyour your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah. 5 I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. This is God’s word. Amen.

HOW CONFESSING OUR GUILT TO GOD BRINGS BLESSING: 1. Because it acknowledges God’s provision for our sin guilt.

We are going to look at verse five for all three of the ways that confessing our sin guilt helps us walk the road of blessing under God. You’ll see three ways that David talks about this.

David says in verse 5, “I acknowledged my sin to you…” Verse five is the key to all five of the verses. Verse five says, “I acknowledge my sin to you.” Who is David talking to? He’s talking to God. What does he know about God? He tells us what he knows about God in the first two verses. He tells us what He knows, what he acknowledges. He has knowledge of it and he agrees with that knowledge. He acknowledges it. He acknowledges to God that he’s a sinner.

Here’s what he knows about God . He says in verse 1, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”

The word, “transgression,” can be translated, “trespass,” “sin,” or “rebellion.” He said, ‘The one who’s really happy is the one who feels God’s forgiveness.’ That’s what he knows. He acknowledges that the feeling of forgiveness comes from God.

Then he says, ‘Blessed is the one whose sin is covered.’ This is interesting; the sin is covered, but is not covered up. Let’s say that you were out at a restaurant with some friends and you got ready to pay the bill. You ask the waitress for the ticket and she says, ‘Actually, the people at that other table covered it for you; they paid your debt.’ That’s what David is saying about God. He’s saying that if I acknowledge my sin to Him, He covers it; He pays for it. He doesn’t cover it up; He deals with it for me.

Verse 2 says this, “Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” That word, “counts,” is like an accounting term. It means that God no longer keeps a record.God moves it from the liability column of your transgression and He takes what Christ has done for you as His asset, His deposit. He deposits it into your account so that your record is cleared.

“Iniquity” is a word that could mean guilt. You were guilty, but you’re no longer counted guilty because Christ took your guilt payment. It’s no longer accounted for. The New Living translation is helpful in understanding some of these words. It says, “Oh what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight.” That’s the idea of the word, “covered;” it’s out of sight.

What joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty. Look at that last part in the ESV version. It says, “in whose spirit there is no deceit.” This is complete honesty; there is no more hiding honesty. You can look in the mirror and be honest with yourself. You can be honest with others. You can be honest with God.

David says there’s nothing like living life out in the open. There’s nothing like saying, ‘I’m just me now. I’m not hiding anything anymore. I acknowledge that Jesus has paid for everything for me in full. I no longer have to carry it myself. I can live honestly now. I can acknowledge what He’s done for me.’

I’m a mess. You hear that alot, right? I’m a mess, but God has given me victory. Admitting this gives us a place of blessing under God.

It says in Romans 3:23 (NLT) “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” Do you believe that? Do you understand that? So you acknowledge that you’re a sinner? The Bible says that all have sinned. The Bible goes on to say, ‘Ok, you are guilty, but let Me help you.’ The Lord wants to help. David is one who recognized this. He acknowledged that he needed God’s help to help him. He needed to take a moral inventory of his life before God.

The unbeliever doesn’t know that they can be forgiven. They don’t know that Christ has paid for their guilt. They to try to conceal their guilt and sin; they try to put on the best picture of themselves, but the believer who acknowledges that Christ has paid for their sin, is able to open up and say, ‘God, look right here at my heart. Look right here. Show me where I need to change.’ They can be honest; they can open up to the Lord.

David wrote this in Psalm 139:23-24 (NLT) “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.” That’s what it means “to hunger and thirst after righteousness.” It means to hunger and thirst after being right with God and doing the will of God, knowing He’s already paid for it. He’s already forgiven me. I can let Him examine me, knowing there’s no condemnation. This is what God calls us to and He helps us with it.

Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to open up and say, ‘God, examine my life?’ We know that He made provision for us.

It says in Romans 6:23 (ESV) “For the wages of sin is death,but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So, we can know this. He’s made provision for us. He’s helped us.

God can help you make a differentiation between appropriate guilt and false guilt. If it’s appropriate guilt, , the thing you’ll notice is if the Holy Spirit is convicting you, you’ll feel a sense of specificity about it. He will tell you exactly what it was – You shouldn’t have said that to her. You shouldn’t have raised your voice at him. You lost your temper.

If you’re growing in Christ, if you’re allowing Him to work on you, there might be a sleepless night until you obey. You might feel that you can’t wait till morning; you have to call this person and ask them to forgive you before you can go to sleep tonight. It might be the middle of the night. Sometimes you don’t have to call; sometimes you just have to tap your spouse. Sometimes it is your spouse that you need to talk to. Hey, wake up. I need to tell you something. I’m sorry. That’s appropriate guilt. The spirit uses it to convict you. It’s not guilt like condemnation. It’s more like to “spur you on.”

False guilt is “fuzzy;” you can’t quite put your finger on what it is. You just feel heavy. It feels condemning; that lets you know that it’s probably not from God. You can pray about that.

I remember after my mother died, I started feeling depressed and discouraged. That’s normal if you lose someone; it’s part of grieving, but there were these lingering thoughts that made me feel bad. I finally realized it was under the category of guilt. Can I describe what I mean by that? I would have these thoughts that I didn’t do enough for my mother before she passed. It wasn’t like I had sinned against her. It was more like I had omitted something, that I should have done more. This feeling of, I should have done this. I didn’t do that. I should have spent more time with her… those kinds of things. Because I’m the first born, where I grew up in a house where my father died when I was eight years old, I always felt responsible for my mom. If I thought about fixing something at my house, I would immediately think of something at my mom’s house that needed to be fixed. My mom has a better house now.

Haveyouever been there, where you are carrying false guilt? That’s a situation where you probably not only need to talk to God about it, you probably need to talk to one or two trusted believers and let them help you reflect on it. I finally got help and freedom from that, it just took a little while. It’s important to do a personal moral inventory, from time to time, before God and also around trusted friends that can help you.

2. Because it no longer hides from our responsibility for sin.

Remember, we’re getting those three verbs that we’re “unpacking” out of verse five. The second verb is stated in the negative. It says, “I did not cover my iniquity.” David is not hiding. Now, that word, “cover,” is the same word that you found up there in verse one where it says that God will cover your sin, but it’s not the same idea. It’s the same word, but not the same idea, because if you try to cover it, the problem is you’re bankrupt so you can’t pay for it. All you can do is run from it and hide it. That’s all you can do. He says, ‘As long as I was hiding it, as long as I was doing this and trying to let no one see the condition of my heart, my secret sin area.’ He wrote two verses to tell you what that felt like. Verses one and two tell you what the blessed life looks like. Verses three and four tell you what it looks like when you’re hiding your guilt. Then, verse five tells you what to do about it.

Let’s look at verse three and four; this might be familiar to you. This is what it looks like when you’re hiding, when you’re trying to cover up and conceal. He says in verse 3, “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.” It’s like a groaning in my soul. Verse three talks about what it feels like to hunger for being right with God, to hunger for righteousness. It feels like you’re dying if you don’t get some help.

Verse four says, “For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” “Your hand was heavy upon me” – this is the heaviness of guilt. “My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer” – I’m thirsty. My tongue is cleaving to the roof of my mouth.

Sometimes, we get in a condition like that and we delay talking to God about it because we feel like we deserve to be in that condition. Especially, if it was a repetitive failure or a repetitive scenario. You thought you had this thing whooped and you’d already confessed. You said , ‘God, I’ll never do that again. I repent of that.’ Then, a couple of days, a couple of weeks, a couple of months goes by and you fall right back into that same sin. Now, you’re so ashamed to even talk to God about it, so then, you kind of “wallow” in it because you feel like you deserve it. You “beat yourself up” and you forget to acknowledge God’s provision for it. You try to conceal it. You don’t want your spouse to know. You don’t want your kids to know. You don’t want your parents or friends to know. You just decide, You know what I’m gonna do? I’m just gonna try to cope and try not to drown. I’m gonna take this or I’m gonna drink that or I’m gonna watch this or I’m gonna eat that…

You try to medicate your pain from guilt. You kept silent though and it got worse and worse. As long as you tried to cover it up, day and night, it got heavier and heavier. You see, the problem is, you can’t run from your sin.

In the book of Numbers 32:23 (ESV), it says, “Behold, you have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out.” Your sin will find you out; they will find you. They will follow you like a shadow.

In the book of Proverbs 28:13 (NLT), it says, “People who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy.” You want to receive mercy, so stop hiding. Stop trying to conceal.

Remember what Adam and Eve did when they sinned against God, when they broke God’s commandment? What did they do? They hid and they tried to cover up their nakedness. We’ve been doing this ever since. We’re all children of Adam and Eve; one big family of fallen people, apart from Christ. We all have that sin nature. We sin and we think, Oh, I need to cover up. I need to hide. I don’t want anybody to see this. I don’t want God to see this. We’ve been doing this ever since Adam and Eve sinned. It’s our habit to hide and conceal.

David says that, when he was silent, when he was trying to cover up myself, he felt like he was dying. Secret sins actually have more power over us because we sin all the more trying to cover it up. We lie about it. We blame others. It’s not my fault. We don’t take responsibility for our own error, our own sin. We would feel better if we could blame it on somebody else. so we sin all the more trying to cover it up.

The thing about secret sins is they give satan a foothold in your life. You know what “satan” means in Hebrew? It’s the Hebrew word for “the accuser.” If you keep it a secret, you’ll hear a whisper. He’ll constantly remind you that you know what you are and he’ll name you that name. He’ll name you by your sin. You need to get that whisper out of your ear and stop concealing; it takes away the power of the secret sin when you confess it and it takes the voice of satan out of your ear.

The secret that you want to conceal the most is the one that you need to reveal the most. It’s the one that’s making you sick; bring it into the light and out of the darkness. Tell a trusted believer about your struggle. Ask him to pray for you. The Bible says to bear one another’s burdens. How can they bear it if you’ve never told anyone about it? We are the body of Christ, believers. He’s the head; we’re the body. “The church is not the steeple, the church is the people.”

James says to confess your sins to one another. It takes its power away.

Ryan, who we videotaped earlier in the week, was at the first service this morning. He was sitting up right about there and I said, “Ryan, how’s it feel now that the whole church knows what a sinner you’ve been?” He laughed out loud. I said to Ryan, “We’re going to put it on the website, so that everybody who goes to our website knows what a sinner you’ve been and what a victory God has given you because you’ve confessed it.”Ryan laughed out loud again. Do you know why he laughed? It is because he is free; there’s no secret. He’s had some struggles. He’s named them. Now, God has given him freedom. God has forgiven him of it. Ryan said in his testimony, “God is still working on me. I still have stuff to work out.” There’s real power in taking away the power of the secret .

The truth is, we really can’t hide our guilt. It’s like your shadow. You can’t run from it. It always follows you, unless you stop trying to cover it up.

My little brother, Donnie, passed away this past September. He was 52 years old. We played his testimony to you on video a few weeks ago. Before he got to where he was really giving everything to God, he would try to recover. He would start talking a little bit about it and then, before we knew it, he would get private about it again. He stopped going to church. He stopped talking to people. He would stumble back into that addiction. He had taken pain pills because of an injury that he had received at work. He started over using those pain pills. It caused him to lose his wife. It caused him to lose his family. It caused him to lose his job. I would try to talk to him. It’s hard when your older brother is a pastor; he would feel shame. I could see it in his eyes as soon as we sat down together. He loved me and I loved him; that never ended, but I could see it in his eyes that he assumed I was judging him. He didn’t want to see me during the seasons when he was in trouble. If he was doing better, he’d call me up; he’d want to talk. I could tell that’s what was happening. I would talk to him and say, “Donnie, just stand up at church and tell everybody what you’ve been through. Give God the glory and stop beating yourself up about it.” He would say back to me, “Peoplein the church are all hypocrites. I don’t want to. They’re sinners too.” He was comparing. The last couple of years of his life, he stopped comparing. Those last couple of years, he spoke at church and told them what God had done for him. He let it go.

I’m not saying that you need to stand up at church or that you need to take a video. Maybe you do; I don’t know what God’s calling you to do, but I know He’s calling you to do this– to confess it. Stop hiding. I don’t know what’s causing you to hide it. Is it shame? Is it pride? What is it? Get rid of it. Secret sins have power that they don’t need to have over you. You’ll never experience the blessed life of God’s grace and freedom as long as you’re hanging on to those sin areas.

3. Because casting it upon the Lord sets us free from guilt!

Now, we see David say, in verse 5, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” You see Casting it upon the Lord sets us free from guilt because casting it upon the Lord sets us free from guilt. Circle the words, “I will confess,” in verse 5. “Confess,” in Hebrew, is really rich. When we say “to confess,” we think, well, that means to admit something or to say something. But in Hebrew, it’s much more colorful. It has the idea of taking something in your hand and casting it off. There’s something in your boat and you need to throw it overboard. It’s a beautiful kind of colorful phrase in the Hebrew . It means to get it off your back and throw it out there. Throw it off. Cast it off and to cast it, not just anywhere, but towards the Lord.

David decided to come clean. He acknowledged that the only way to live a blessed life is to experience forgiveness and God’s covering. He decided to stop hiding; he wasn’t going to hide anymore. He decided to confess it to the Lord to throw it over on Him.

Now, David had an advantage, because he was very familiar with the books of Moses. He was also familiar with the practices of the worship at the Tabernacle. He had this picture of how the high priests, once a year at Yom Kippur, at the time of the day of atonement, the priest would put his hands upon the head of the scapegoat. Putting our sin guilt on Him was taught by the example given in Aaron and the scapegoat. Let me read this scripture from Leviticus: Leviticus 16:21 (ESV) “And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness.”

Here’s what David knew. He knew it wasn’t enough to try to cast it off because then it would still cling to you. It would be glued to you, couldn’t get shed of it, whatever it was. He knew he needed to cast it off on something else or better yet Someone else. What we have in the Old Testament is this picture of the high priest putting his hands on the head of the scapegoat. That way, he was casting off the sins of Israel. It had to happen every year because there was no permanent solution until Jesus came. When Jesus came, He was the perfect sacrifice. He’s the lamb that God, given for the sins of the world.

When we cast off our sins, we put them on the head of Jesus. We cast them off to the cross. We cast them off to the One who can actually take away the sins of the world. That’s what we do. When we confess, we’re not just saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ We’re not just saying, ‘I repent.’ We’re saying, ‘I’m putting this on your tab, Jesus,, because You’re the only one who can pay for it. I’m casting it on You.’ This gives us freedom.

It says in 1 Peter 2:24 (ESV), “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” Remember Ryan talking about that wound that he didn’t want to show God? He wasn’t even sure what it was himself. He spoke about how he grew up without a father and the men in his life were not good examples. Then, he ended up hanging out with the wrong crowd. “It was fun at first,” he said, “until it wasn’t.”

God wants you to stop concealing and say, “Look at my heart, Lord. I trust You that You want my very best. I’m casting my guilt, my shame, my hurts, my habits and my hang ups on You because You are able to pay the price. You’ve already done it.”

Ryan said, “My family is able to see me living in victory.” Can you tell how much that meant to him to be able to say that about his family? He was sitting about right here this morning, with his wife and his daughters, all of them with big smiles on their faces. Oh, what victory! Ryan said, “Where I was a slave before, now, I know that there’s nothing that God wants me to hold on to. There’s not a wound that He doesn’t want to heal. There’s nothing He doesn’t want to restore. You’re never too far gone.”

How about you? Do you feel like you’re too far gone? Are you still covering up? Are you still hiding? Why not open up to the Lord and say, ‘I acknowledge that the blessed life comes from forgiveness from God and that He covers my sin. In other words, He pays for it. He separates my sin as far as the east is from the west. He plunges it into the deepest sea. He covers it. I can’t cover it and I’m going to stop trying to cover up. I’m going to start being real. I’m going to be real in my small group.’

Are you in a small group? We have small groups that we call “community groups.” This past week, in my community group, we separated men and women to pray at the end of our evening together. We often do that. We’ve noticed that men and women are different; we communicate differently. I’ve noticed that when you get men and women in different rooms like that, praying together, both groups will be more transparent and real with each other than if we were in a coed setting. In the men’s group, we were sitting there and one of the men in our group got quiet. It was his turn to offer his prayer request. He says to us, “Pray for me that I would be more committed to doing God’s will in my life every day.” He was emotional about it. Man, this “dude” is getting real here. Several of us had been asking for prayer for our back; you know, that kind of thing. That was me; I asked for prayer for my back. Sometimes though, when it comes our turn to give a prayer quest, we ask for something way out here that’s got nothing to do with us because we don’t want to get real. We believe in the Lord, but we aren’t ready to trust people and we still don’t trust God.

The book of James tells us to confess our sins to one another so that we may be healed. Learn to trust people. I’m not saying to broadcast it to anybody, but learn to trust and be real. In our community groups, it’s important to be real. Be real and encourage one another by allowing them to bear your burdens with you. I was thankful for that prayer request to be more committed. It really challenged all the men in my group last week to get more real in our prayer time.

Will you confess your sins to the Lord? Will you cast them on Him and put them on Him? He’s already paid for them. Not acknowledging our guilt means it stays on us. Stop trying to cover it up; put it over on Him.

I’ve talked to you about community groups; one other ministry that I want to promote to you, and we’ve been talking about it every week, is our Celebrate Recovery Ministry that meets on Thursday evenings. This ministry is actually based on the eight Beatitudes that we’re covering right now. I’ve been teaching that our Celebrate Recovery Ministry uses an acronym, R.E.C.O.V.E.R.Y. These eight principles are from the Beatitudes.

We’ve already talked about week one: Realize I’m not God. That’s the first one. In other words, I’m powerless. I’m poor in spirit. That’s the reality step. I can’t help myself. The E stands for Earnestly believe that God exists. That’s the hope step. God is the answer. I need Jesus. I believe that I matter to Him. He has the power to save me. The C stands for Consciously choose to commit. That’s the commitment step. I commit my life to Jesus.

This week, the O stands for Openly examine and confess my faults. I confess my sins to God, to myself and to someone I trust because we are the body of Christ. We bear one another’s burdens. We’re transparent and we are real with each other. This might be called the “house cleaning step.” This is where we get serious and we actually grow because we’re actually dealing with our shame, our sin and our guilt. We’re giving it to Jesus. Would you do that today? Will you stop covering? Would you give your life fully to Jesus and would you ask Him to help you start growing? You can confess your guilt. You can come clean and experience the blessed life.

Let’s pray. Lord, we, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for the way it liberates us and sets us free to live in honesty, to live in righteousness, to be right with You and right with one another. Lord, thank You that we can live openly and honestly, Lord, we just pray that You would help us today. Lord, I pray especially for that person that’s in our midst today, maybe they’re watching online, maybe they’re somewhere in a place where they’ve just never given their life to Christ. Is that you? You can pray with me right now, right where you are. What matters is that you believe what you’re praying and that you want it. That you’re hungry and thirsty after a right relationship with God. You can pray like this, ‘Dear Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner. I am acknowledging that I’m a sinner. I need help. Dear Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner, but I believe You died on the cross for me, You were raised from the grave and that You live today. I put my sin on You and ask You to forgive me and make me the person You want me to be, to cleanse my heart and my soul and help me to hunger and thirst after a relationship with You in all things, in all areas. I want You to be my Lord and Savior. I want to be a child of God. Save me, Lord.” If you’re praying a prayer like that, believing in your heart, God will save you. Others are here and you’ve done that. You’ve asked Christ to be your Lord and your Savior, but maybe you feel kind of like Ryan did. You haven’t grown and it might be because you’re still hiding. You’re not serious about following Jesus. You can do something about that today. You can pray, “Lord, I believe in You. I trust You. Would You examine my heart? Would You search me and know me. Reveal to me any way that I’m not following Your will in my life. Lord, I want to follow You in all ways. I confess to You my need for You and my desire to follow You in every arena of my life.” Lord, we love You. We lift all these things up to You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.