How Can I Get Past The Shame And Guilt I Feel When I Go To Church?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

If you walk into any church in America today, there will be at least one person who feels like they don't belong. And I've seen it too many times personally, I've read too many statistics, I know it to be true, there's people that feel like they don't belong and it might be just some vague disqualification like I don't belong here, it might be some comparison trap, right? It might be like, you know, well they probably read their Bible every day, they probably know all the songs, all the words of this song, they probably whatever and I'm not good enough. Maybe it's just a sense of spiritual unreadiness like oh it's too soon, maybe I should've come next week or maybe I should've, maybe I should've, maybe I should've. Maybe it's past guilt, maybe it's I just did this thing and I know that I did this thing, God knows I did this thing and the tacit understanding I have with the Lord is that I don't get

to do spiritual things because I'm less than, I'm disqualified in some capacity because of this past thing I did. If that is you today, if that is you this morning, you have hit the jackpot because that's what we're talking about today, okay? I expected more laughter there, I'm not gonna lie. Just a little, thank you, okay. Well now it's, we got pity laughter over here. Okay, I'll take it, whatever, I'll take pity. Our summer series has been called Weak-Minded. Weak-Minded because we are trying to deal with the questions that come up during the week. We're trying to build out some kind of way

to fight what we need to fight, not on a sunny morning. Past a Sunday morning, during the week. And so today's question technically is not weak-minded. Today's question is about Sunday mornings, I guess. How can I get past the shame and guilt I feel when I go to church? Really you can supply anything in there. How can I get past the shame and guilt I feel when I read the Bible, when I hear somebody else talking about Jesus, when I, whatever. How do I get past that shame and guilt? We're gonna see what the Bible says about that this morning. We're gonna be in Ephesians two. Today we're gonna read through the first five verses. We're gonna go pretty deep on those verses. And we're gonna get real practical, real tactical, trying to understand what it is that we're dealing with. What we need to see is,

we need to see what the Bible says about spiritual death and spiritual life. These are generally the terms that the Bible uses. And so we're gonna look at what spiritual death is exactly. We're gonna look at what spiritual death does to people. We're gonna look at how someone can know if they are spiritually dead. And then we're gonna talk about how we grab hold of spiritual life, okay? So what does it exactly, what does it do? How do I know? And then how do I escape it? How do I grab onto spiritual life? I would encourage you also, if you are here this morning and you've been going to church for decades and all this, I would just ask you to listen with more of an open mind, maybe than you normally would. I know that what we're gonna be covering this morning is foundational stuff, but sometimes, going back to the foundations that you think you got licked is a really good thing to do.

And so I just wanna encourage you this morning as we read Ephesians two, a lot of this may, if you go to church all the time, this might sound really familiar to you, that's fine. I would just encourage you to push past that just a little bit. Ephesians chapter two, verses one and two. It says, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. We're gonna stop there just a second.

What Ephesians two is helping us understand and what we see all over the New Testament is that people in their natural state are spiritually dead. People in their natural state are spiritually dead. When you came out of the womb, you were spiritually dead. Before you knew Jesus Christ, before anything like that, you were spiritually dead. What is it? Well, what we see in these two verses right here, it's about following whatever world they are in. So you got two things. It says you're following the course of this world and you're following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. This is the devil, this is the enemy. So you are following the course of this world. So you're doing what people around you are doing and you're also kind of unknowingly, you're following the enemy. You're just kind of doing what comes natural to you,

in other words. If you're spiritually dead, you're simply reading and reacting to what is around you. You're copying people that are around you. You're kind of doing what you're supposed to be doing in whatever situation that you're in. And so if you are, for example, if you are surrounded by very honest people, let's just say you grew up in a household or you grew up around friends and you guys had a code and it was always on. Even if you have to say a hard thing, a mean thing, or whatever thing, always honest. Then you understood, you grew up with the pressure. The world that you grew up in had the pressure to seem honest.

If you're following the course of the world, the particular world that you grew up in, esteemed honesty a whole lot, then you're gonna grow up and you're going to esteem honesty. You're at least going to seem honest. There's this pressure externally to seem honest. In the same way, if you grew up around mean people, if you grew up around people that beat you, if you grew up around people that verbally abused you, you're gonna follow the course of that world. I don't need to give you the statistics because there's just such common knowledge of people that abuse others. Like it's mind blowing, the percentage, I don't know it. I've heard it several times. The percentage of those people of abusers who have been abused. What's happening? They're following the course of the world and they're following the enemy and they don't even know it. They're doing what comes natural to them

because it's the world that they grew up in. You have social pressure. And here's where a lot of confusion can set in, especially in Bible Belt, Texas. Okay? Which is where we are. Just in case you were wondering, we are in the buckle of the Bible Belt, bro. People can quote you chapter and verse at the drop of a hat. Okay. In the Bible Belt, you can grow up surrounded by people that are spiritually alive. And man, you see them and you admire them and you wanna be them and you're like, oh, so great. Very often, I talk to people all the time that are not in church anymore or maybe they were churches, a little kid, now they're an adult and they hadn't been in church a long time. They hadn't read the Bible, they had nothing, right? Spiritually, they're still kind of just trying to figure it out, but it's at an arm's length. And I mean, without fail, there's always a grandma

or a great aunt or somebody that they revere, like the Virgin Mary. I mean, they revere this woman because she sacrificed for them, she drug them to church, she prayed for them, she, right? And so there's this sense that like, you're surrounded by these people that are spiritually alive. You look up to them. And so as you're growing up, you have social pressure to seem and act spiritually alive. That's the pressure, that's the actual world. That's when you're following the course of the world. That's the world you grew up in. You wanted to seem spiritually alive because you saw all these people that were spiritually alive. You had no idea what made them spiritually alive. You didn't know kind of where all that came from, but you know that you wanted to be like that. And so you had this social pressure. Problems come up in somebody's life when they grow up in that,

but then they leave that environment. When they leave that environment, there's no social pressure to be spiritually alive and they find out, like, oh, I didn't wanna do what they were doing anyway. Or they come to a moment in their life where their life crashes out, where they just are hitting rock bottom and they have a level of accountability with themselves that's brand new, and they say, you know what, I never actually believed this stuff in the first place. We call that deconstructing. All that is, is people that grew up in an environment where people were spiritually alive around them and they mistakenly thought, all I have to do is act spiritually alive. All I have to do is follow the course of this world. But what was actually happening in their heart and mind was that they were just doing the religious actions. They were just doing whatever everybody else

was doing around them. They were singing the praise songs people were singing. They got baptized because people got baptized. They were just doing what was in front of them without understanding why, without any power actually to do it on their own. And when they get out of that environment, they realize, oh, that wasn't me at all. That was not something I actually believed. Ephesians 2:3, it continues the description. So we were following the course of the world, following the prince of the power of the air, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, that's among whom is the sons of disobedience, right? This is people that are following the course of this world, right? Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and whereby nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

So if you are spiritually dead, what is it? If you're spiritually dead, you're following whatever world you're in, and unwittingly following the enemy, but also you are following personal lusts. You were just following whatever your gut tells you to do, whatever your sin nature wants you to do, you're just doing that. Whatever's kind of put in front of you, you're just doing that. And when these lusts that you are dealing with, and the social pressure that you're dealing with are at odds, then that often results in living a double life. That often results in at least feeling like an imposter, if not being one. When you have this pressure to live a certain way, but then you also have this pressure internally to feed whatever you wanna feed, and you have no real power to tell whatever you wanna feed, no, you are sunk. You are sunk. You have no power. This is why we talk about shame and guilt.

In fact, in the last song we just sang, we talked about shame and guilt. The reason that those are paired together is because it's talking about this internal and external pressure. You have guilt coming in from the outside, and you have shame coming up from the inside. Shame and guilt deals with things that you did, and lies that you believe about your identity.

Guilt is your actions, shame is your identity. And it encompasses what we're talking about in the first three verses in Ephesians chapter two, where you've got this social pressure to perform, or do things in whatever way, and then internally you've got these lusts that are going on. And those things, sometimes they can be at odds, sometimes they can't. And so spiritual death, to define it, it's completely falling prey to shame and guilt.

Even whenever shame and guilt want to take you two different directions, because you feel like you're stuck in a washing machine. Like you're just going around, you're just getting tugged every which way. In Ephesians four, it talks about this state, and it says it's like you're tossed around to and fro by the waves. So you're just going back and forth, you're just yanked left and right. Maybe your lusts are telling you to do something one way, maybe social pressure is telling you to do something else, maybe a different set of social pressures. You're just trying to, but you are powerless. In Ephesians four it actually talks about, it's like children in the ocean being tossed by the waves.

Children in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean have no chance to swim whatever direction they want. They are just pulled around. They're not living on purpose, they're just kind of pulled around. And this is why it is hard to feel okay doing anything spiritual, because you often question the authenticity of the action that you are performing. Because you deal with so much shame and guilt, you can't ever really know if what you're doing is real or authentic or comes from a good place. It almost has to be accidental for that to happen. So this is what spiritual death is, what does it do? What are the results of spiritual death? It says that we were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. The Bible is extremely clear about spiritual death, that spiritual death, really all it does is it only builds up wrath and condemnation. That's the only thing spiritual death can do.

It's not like some people do spiritual death worse. It's that that's the only thing it does. Isaiah 57, 20 talks about how the wicked are like the tossing sea for it cannot be quiet in its waters toss up mire and dirt. That's a metaphor we're being given for. Whatever you're trying to do, the only thing you're gonna do is kick up dirt. Whatever you're trying to do, I don't know if you've ever been there in your life where you're just trying to do this thing and this thing and this thing and you're trying to make a lot of it work and all it does is make things worse. All it does is kick up more mire and dirt. It doesn't help, it doesn't go anywhere.

In spiritual death, there is no way to exercise faith. There is no way to reach beyond. And so spiritual death keeps you imprisoned in your own shame and guilt. And some of you today, you are still spiritually dead. You are still sifting through shame and guilt. And you've become so used to it that it feels like it's normal. And you think to yourself, you believe there's no way out of this.

And it is crushing. So how does this play out? How do we know? Right, we know what spiritual death is. We know what it results in. How do we know that we are dealing with spiritual death? Well, it takes a little bit of self-reflection. But I want you to maybe think about it this way. Like it is a reality of spiritual death that drags you through kind of different cycles. Okay, different cycles where we follow a system.

Right, we're doing whatever is in front of us. There you go, you can see it there. We do whatever we think we need to do. And then we see the bad end, that that set of actions, that lifestyle brings us to, and then we begin to despair. And we see no way out. Somehow, some way, we distract ourselves and go back to the beginning. Like maybe it's binge watch Netflix is the fourth step there. I'm not really sure what goes there. It's different for everybody, but there's a way, time, conversation, fooling yourself, whatever. You just kind of have to get away from it all. And then you just do the same thing over again. This is a cycle that drags people down over and over and over and over again. And what you have is, and this is just kind of wild to think about, but this is people's existence. This is people's existence in Bible Belt, in Burleson, where they grew up religious.

They had no idea where that power was coming from. They grew up religious. Then they engage in these personal lusts. They feel tremendous shame and guilt for doing those things. They wanna hide it from people that they love and trust. So they do it in secret. They end up living a double life. So they're trying to follow that system, and they realize that what they're doing is going to end badly. Either they're gonna end up lying to people that they love, or they're gonna be outed, which is gonna be devastating. And then they begin to despair.

What that results in is people believing I've tried religion several times, and it hasn't worked. You ever heard that? Anybody ever heard anybody say that? Yeah, felt that, been that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard that a lot. Hey, I've tried religion several times, and I really don't, I mean, I don't wanna sit there and correct them, right? I don't wanna say, well, don't try religion, try Jesus. But that's not helpful. Honestly, in the moment, I'm being serious. That's not super helpful. I would not encourage you to say that because it would just make them upset, rightfully so. And you probably won't get a second hearing. But it is true that what they're trying is, they are trying to physically impose a religious system upon their lives, and they're saying, this doesn't fix the thing. And I'm like, yeah, man, it doesn't. You're right, let's talk that through. Let's work through that.

So how's it play out? So if that's you, maybe you're dealing with some spiritual death. Some spiritual death, like it's a cold or something. That's not what I mean, exactly. You're in this reality where it just drags you through this cycle, and it drags you further down and further down and further down, and you experience debilitation. That's kind of the other thing. You experience deep debilitation. You don't even wanna go to church anymore. You don't even wanna read your Bible anymore. You don't even wanna pray anymore because it brings back all that, kind of that bad memories, all this despair, all this frustration. You don't even want to go there because you're dealing with all of that. This is debilitation. You don't wanna feel like an imposter anymore. And so you just refrain.

You have a sense, this is so burlesque, and gosh, you have a sense that you've made God mad, and you don't know why. You have a sense that, this is Flannery O'Connor, who is long past, who was a famous author, and she wrote extensively and observed southern culture in particular. She wrote some really wild stuff. It's pretty interesting to read. But upon reflecting on southern culture, she said, I think it's safe to say that while the south is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. She goes on to say that it's people that have a vague sense that Jesus should be honored and worshiped, but they don't really know what to do with that. They don't have a shelf to put that on. And so they live in the specter of somebody that they're made in the image of, but they don't know how to relate to.

They know they should be better people, but they can't figure out how. And they've tried to be religious, and it hasn't worked. And they don't know how their heroes did it, because their heroes are gone. And so they're stuck in despair. Or they've just given up completely. And the good news, Jesus doesn't have to haunt you. The good news is that actually our shame and guilt show us our need for salvation. So our shame and guilt is useful. We're gonna talk about that in just a second, because I can hear some of you, you got an objection or two, okay? Let me just deal with that. Either that, either you have an objection or you are supplying one that somebody else gave you that sounds really good right now. So if you object to this, you got a few options, so we'll lay them out, nice and easy. Your first objection could be that people actually don't deserve wrath.

Okay, you're saying, okay, God's real, Bible's true, all that's good. I believe the gospel. But people don't actually deserve wrath, okay? People are basically victims, and they haven't done enough to deserve wrath. I would simply say that the unfiltered gospel message is that people who reject Jesus are condemned already. We'll look at that in just a second. Romans 3:23 describes people, and it says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. If you think of God's glory like a measuring stick, right, none of us measure up to that. All of us are less than, right? None of us do that. You can see this, if you've raised children, you can see this. If you've seen children in public, you can see this. Children are cute, and they're great, and they're super fun, and all that, but they are selfish people. If a child's mind and demeanor and understanding

was put into an adult's body, it would be the equivalent of like a drunk driver. It would be somebody, it would be a hopeless narcissist who was just looking to use people to do whatever they wanted them to do, and that's the nice kids. Look, kids are great, but we come out of the womb believing the world should revolve around us, and our journey as people is realizing the world doesn't revolve around us. Some of us are later to the party than others on that fact, but that is, man, that's humanity, bro. It's not that people are good, and that they're just corrupted over time by external forces. No, no, external forces are definitely part of the equation, but man, we are marked by sin. Even out of the womb, you can see this. We all have sin and fall short of the glory of God. No one's righteous. Nobody gets to wear the righteousness white hat. We all wear the black hat.

That's your first option. It's not a great one that people actually don't deserve wrath. You got a lot of humanity to deal with. Second objection might be that God won't follow through with that, that he's just bluffing. There's whole denominations that are actually built on this idea, where if you're a universalist, for example, you think God's not really gonna do what he says in Scripture. He's kind of bluffing. He just wants us to, he's tricking us into loving each other. Okay. I would simply say, maybe I'm not being charitable, sorry. I'm not trying to be too dismissive, but there are people who believe that. John three, so we love quoting John three 16. Look at the next two verses, John three 17 and 18. It says, for God did not send his son, this is Jesus talking by the way, that's kind of important. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world,

but in order that the world might be saved through him. Okay, so Jesus saying, I didn't come just to condemn here. I didn't, it's not my purpose in coming. Whoever 18, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God. Jesus is saying very, very succinctly here, he says at many other places, in many other ways, Matthew 25, where he talks about the parable of the sheep and the goats, comes to mind. There's a couple of other places where Jesus is very explicit. God's not bluffing. He's not joking. He's gonna send people to hell for realsies. It's not, it's not some, it's not some bluff. It's not some like trick to make us obey or anything. Look, God does what he says he's going to do, amen. And this, God is very clear on what he said he was going to do. Several times over, Old Testament and New Testament,

Jesus' words and Paul's and prophets. God's not gonna follow through, man, that's a blind hope. And it's cheap, it's untrue. And it's what people who have resigned themselves to doing whatever they want, living however they want, it's what people tell themselves so they can maybe fake some sleep at night. It's not true. Here's your third option. And this is a very common option. I hear this common option. I hear this option all the time. That the shame and guilt that I'm talking about here is actually not real, that it's made up. That it is simply our heritage or other influences used upon us to keep us in line, okay? Have you ever heard anything like that? Yeah, a few, yes, few of you have heard that, yes, indeed. There are some churches that, some denominations that will totally take advantage of that and co-opt that even as their own teaching.

That our heritage or other influences are used to keep us in line. Here's what I would say to that. I would say that your heritage does shape you, but your heritage only changes how your guilt and shame look. It doesn't actually inject guilt and shame per se. It just changes the shape of it. Okay, so we discussed previously, we discussed this previously, maybe your heritage, okay, kind of following the course of this world, maybe your heritage is that we always defend family.

Maybe that's your heritage. We always defend family. There's still a right and a wrong with defending your family. Maybe your heritage is, hey, you need to be true to who you are. That's a common one, right? You need to be true to who you are, but there's still a way to pass or fail that. There's still success and failure in being true to who you are. Maybe, maybe people are, maybe your heritage says, do good to people and that goodness will come back to you, right? Pretty common, pretty common in Burleson. We got kindness matters like spray painted or mural on the side of a building, right? Like we understand that, oh, we need to be kind. Why do we need to be kind?

Oh, it's gonna come back to you, right? Listen, that's a worldview, guys. That's a whole heritage telling you what is successful, what is not. There is a way to do that. In every single one of these heritages, it doesn't inject shame or guilt. It just changes how you pass or fail. And if you look at your heritage, if you look at the heritage of people around you, there's a pass-fail system in every single heritage. There's a way to do wrong in every single heritage. People still feel guilt and shame in their bones. And if you just simply try to will it into existence, try to manifest that guilt is not real, so I'm just going to ignore it. Shame is not real, so I'm just going to ignore it. I'm just gonna do this mind trick on myself. Everything inside of you, your body, your mind, your soul, your spirit, all knows that is not true and will reject it. You will go through a particular kind of self-torture

that is rare among humans. When you try to tell yourself that shame and guilt are just made up, that they're just foisted upon you by your heritage. Let me give you one more piece. I think this is really, really interesting. If you were to line out all the fields of psychology, all the major fields of psychology, and you were to just pick one at random, you would find that it would say that shame and guilt are real, they're real phenomenon, and they have a use in coming to terms with your humanity.

Now, I don't need to lecture you guys on psychology, but I need you to understand something about psychology. That if you talk about Freudian psychology, you talk about evolutionary psychology, you talk about cognitive, attributional psychology, you talk about all these different kinds of major schools of thought, people who do not agree with one another, people who look at the same phenomenon and explain it in very different ways. They are branches of psychology. Psychology is not a monolith. It is varied in sundry.

They all, all agree that guilt, okay, that was almost a famous sermon. So close to fame right there. Okay, all right, okay, let's try to collect it guys. Let's be grownups. All the fields of psychology agree that guilt and shame, both, they're not just sort of useful that they are foundational in helping you come to terms with how your life is right now. That the answer in every field of psychology is not to just forget it or to pretend like it doesn't exist, but actually to use it. Guilt because we commit sin, shame because we are subject to sin. Our very being is subject to sin. So you might say, okay, Drew, I'm convinced.

My shame and guilt shows me my need for salvation. How do I let it go? How do I move on? Is it just religious psychology now? What are we doing? What's the actual stuff? What's the meat? Okay, this is not sequential, although maybe it would help if it were. It doesn't have to be. First and foremost, we need to believe the gospel and we need to understand what it is. So let's look at scripture. Don't take my word for it. Look at Ephesians two, four, and five. So in one through three, we just talked about how humanity was sinful and spiritually dead. Now we're gonna talk about how to grab on to spiritual life.

It says, but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. There's a lot there. Let's unpack it just a little bit. We need to believe the gospel. Okay, let's look at this. God is the subject of these two verses. We should understand this. I'm not trying to teach you grammar. I'm just trying to help you see the obvious here. God is the one doing something. Okay? In the gospel of Jesus Christ, it does not begin with you need to do something. It's not in the middle and it's not in the end. In the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is news. Something has been done to you. Something has been made available to you. Something has been done on your behalf without your merit. I need you to understand, you have heard this so many times, but I need you to understand

that this is what separates Christianity from every other world religion ever. Okay? And Jesus was very clear on this, that he's the way, the truth, and the life. Not anybody else. Not other spiritual avenues. Not nothing else. In any other spiritual enterprise, in any other kind of religious maze that you walk through, and Christianity can feel like a maze sometimes. No kidding. But whenever you are walking through any other kind of, you're trying to be Buddhist, and you're walking through the Buddhist maze, the thing that you are driven by in Buddhism, for example, is that you have to do something.

The thing that you have to do in Islam is that you have to do something. You have to follow the five pillars. You have to follow the law. Islam means law. You have to follow the law. In Christianity, God is the activator. God is the one who goes and searches and gets. God is the one. So look, God being rich in mercy, okay? God is merciful toward us. Why? Why is he merciful toward us? Is it because we're cool? Right? It's because of the great love with which he loved us. If you're keeping score at home, we still haven't done anything. Okay, God is being merciful to us. God has great love that he loves us with, and he loves us just so that we can understand how much he loves us. Look at the beginning of five. He loves us even when we were dead in our trespasses. Okay, that's the crux of the gospel. You have to understand this. I can't emphasize it enough.

That the gospel of Jesus Christ, I'm a Christian, not because I have unlocked some spiritual key, or I've unlocked some spiritual door with a magical key that only I've gotten to, and if you had the magical key, then you can turn on the lock and then you can enter. We're not talking about that. I'm a Christian because God found me, God gave me truth, and God pulled me out of my spiritual death, the end. That's why I'm a Christian. It's not because my parents were Christians. It's not because that's my heritage. It's not because any particular demographic that I fall into or anything like that. Some aspects of my life, actually, demographically, would exclude me from that.

Like some people say, well, of course you're a Christian. Look at you. First of all, you don't know my life. Second of all, don't pretend like being a Christian is just some voting block. It's not. There's people all over the world, poor, rich, black, white, any other color that you can think of. Christianity is a worldwide movement, the majority of which is not in America. You've got to understand that, that what is happening to people is that the God of the universe is reaching into people's lives. Yes, individual people's lives, and making himself known through the gospel, through his son, he has sent his son. This is how, even when we were dead in our trespasses, this is how we are made alive. We are made alive together with Christ. Christ Jesus, Jesus Christ. Christ just means the Messiah. Christ is not Jesus' last name. Jesus of Nazareth was born, lived a perfect life,

died a death that he didn't need to die. He didn't deserve that death, but that's actually really important because he didn't deserve the death. Who deserved the death? We did. So Jesus took our death so that we could have his life. This is called the great exchange in some circles, where we take on the life that Jesus had, and Jesus takes on our death, that we deserve to die. We deserve to be condemned. Your shame and guilt is perfectly rational. It corresponds with reality. You should understand that. And I'm not trying to be mean to you. I'm trying to talk straight with you, and I hope that you understand that. I hope you hear my heart in that. The basic offer of the gospel is that the shame and guilt that actually condemns you is taken from you. That's actually what the gospel is, that your sins, the sins that actually condemn you, the ways that you really don't measure up,

it doesn't matter how religious you are, it doesn't matter how good your kids are, it doesn't matter how much money you make or how great you are at your job or how honest you are, it doesn't matter. None of that matters when it comes to salvation. The basic offer of the gospel is that you didn't deserve salvation and it was granted to you. What a joy. Outside of Jesus Christ, your shame and guilt absolutely count and they will send you to hell. Period. I don't relish saying that, but if we can't say that, then we don't understand what we're being saved from.

We don't understand what it is to live out, that there's actually living outside of Jesus Christ and how terrible that is. And that's really what I was trying to describe at the beginning. It's this endless cycle of finding irrelevance. It's this endless cycle of just hitting these dead ends and then you just distract yourself and then you start it all over again. And maybe you pick a different world to follow at this point and you just kind of keep going. Man, it's despair. The people that are in your life that do not know the Lord, and if it's you and you're sitting here, look, you can dress it up however you want, but you are in despair and it's real. And you don't need to stay there. In a very straightforward way, your shame and your guilt are the very things that the enemy uses to keep you from spiritual life, but it's also the one thing that is pointing you

to run to God for your spiritual life. It's ironic. So how are you gonna let it go? First thing, really, you gotta believe the gospel. And it's kind of foundational. It's kind of paramount. If that's the first time you've ever heard that, or if that's the first time it's maybe ever struck you, that's fine, okay? You're not in kindergarten, and everybody else is in 10th grade. Like, you're fine. The best thing that you can do is tell somebody about that. And we're actually gonna have a time of prayer at the end, and I'm just gonna invite you to pray through that. Let me work through a few more things first, and then we'll get to that. The second thing that you need to do, you need to meditate upon the gospel until it becomes real. You need to meditate on the gospel until it becomes real. Part of the problem that we have in America, or really in Western civilization, I don't know,

lots of places, is that we have the gospel on audio, but we have the world that we're following on video. You tell me what wins, right? It's video every time. That you have something in front of you that's distracting you from actually what's real. Take some time to meditate on the gospel. Some of you are like, I've never meditated in my life. Well, you might not call doomscrolling meditating, but it totally is.

I know it's funny, but it's true, just the same. I'd encourage you to take some time off of doomscrolling, take some time off of that post you had to post on Facebook about that thing that you're real concerned about, and meditate on the gospel. Read Ephesians 2, 4, and 5. The third thing, surround yourself with the gospel in a home group. Look, I realize this is super convenient, because home groups start this week.

I don't care, it's fine. It's still true. It's still true that the Bible study portion of a home group is a very important corporate event, because what you're doing together is you're meditating on the gospel together. That's a really good thing to do. Although I'm sure some of you could recite the gospel from stem to stern, and you got it all memorized, and during a given week, you forget the gospel way more than you remember it.

In real time, in the argument, in the defense of your own honor, in the fight with your spouse, in getting your kids to do whatever they need to do, in the middle of all that, it can be difficult to remember the gospel. It can be hard to meditate on the gospel. I would encourage you to jump into a home group. A couple weeks ago, I said that home groups were feeling dumb, looking dumb with people.

That joke didn't land this time, that's fine. Spiritually, if you're going to grow, you're gonna enter into a deal where you're going to look dumb. You're gonna try things that you're not good at. It's like learning to play guitar. You ever seen somebody try to do that the first time? It's kind of horrible. Nobody's recording that, or they shouldn't. The first time you try spiritual things, like the first time you try to fast, the first time you try to pray, the first time you try to read the Bible, the first time you try to pronounce Melchizedek, it's weird, and you need to understand that you're going to look dumb, and that's okay. And so home groups are a place for you to look dumb with people, that understand what it is to feel dumb in front of people.

Surround yourself with the gospel, in a home group. Third thing, fourth thing, talk openly about the guilt and shame that you feel. Now, I'm not saying start every conversation with the, whoa, the guilt and shame that you feel, look, the enemy's trying, guys. We're gonna push on. If you talk openly about the guilt and shame that you feel, and I'm not saying start every conversation, but don't shy away from it either.

Home group, again, shameless plug, home group comes in clutch here. You need to realize that you're talking to equals. Does that make sense? That you're not coming in as a spiritual idiot and everybody else has PhDs, and man, maybe one of these decades, you're going to somehow measure up. That's not actually how it is. And I've heard that, I heard that a lot growing up, and I've said it a lot, and people still believe it, though. They think I'm not as mature as I need to be. I haven't used all the time that I need to use in a way that I need to, look,

I could sit up here and just list all my sins from this past week. Maybe that would convince you, I'm not really gonna do that, unless we're in a home group together, and then watch out. But man, I need you to understand how imperfect we all are. I need you to understand that we all blow up at people that we don't need to blow up at. We all think about ourselves way too much and how we came off and how we're up here. We all think about advancing ourselves up our other people way too much. We all think about how great it used to be or how great we are if people just figured it out. Everybody deals with that. We all deal with that. We all give into these lusts that we have. And I'm not saying we should all just give in and everything's fine. What I'm trying to help you understand is that you're not coming in at just kindergarten and everybody else's PhDs. You need to understand that you are talking to equals.

We all, I mean, we all, I don't wanna get all constitutioning on you, but that's part of the reason why in the constitution, why it talks about we're all under God. Because that, being created by God is an equalizer. Everybody was created by God. It's kind of the spiritual equivalent of saying everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time, okay? We're all created by God. So I wanna leave you with three different situations and two prayers. Maybe you're in one of these three situations. And I'm gonna give you two different prayers. And we're gonna pray through them. If you do not follow Jesus, again, jackpot, if you do not follow Jesus, that shame and guilt that you feel is pushing you toward something that you need. And so again, it's not good, but it serves a purpose.

If you do not follow Jesus, understand that that, what you're feeling inside doesn't need to keep you down. Actually, what you feel inside should make you run. It should make you run to the cross. It should make you run to Jesus. And secondly, if you are not sure if you follow Jesus, if you got some confusing kind of pieces in your religious background, you don't really know kind of how all this connects, you maybe did follow Jesus, but maybe don't now, or it's confusing. We'll just leave it at that. It's confusing. It's difficult. That shame and guilt that you feel may be an indicator of the same thing. I would just encourage you to consider greatly, it may be that you grew up with some social pressure to be religious, and now you're not in that environment anymore, and you don't know who you are. It could be that you've never believed the gospel in the first place.

It could be that you're a Christian. I don't know, again, nobody knows, right? Like I'm not trying to like peg you down. I'm just trying to help you understand. If you aren't sure, if you follow Jesus, you can be sure. I am sure that I have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. I am sure that his spirit is in me. I am sure that I will spend eternity with him. Sure, sure, sure. And yeah, like I have moments of doubt just like everybody else does. But the moments of doubt pale in comparison to the assurance that I feel. If that's you, I just want you to, I want both of you to, I want to invite you to that. I want everybody to bow their head, please. And I'm gonna be praying a prayer for people that if they don't follow Jesus, or if they don't know they follow Jesus, I'm gonna pray that prayer. You can pray it with me. You can pray some version of you want, whatever.

There's nothing magical about this prayer. This is just what we're doing. This is how we're praying. And then we're gonna pray again in just a minute. Why don't you pray this with me. Lord Jesus, you have died in my place. I trust you with my whole life. Lord Jesus, take all of my shame and guilt away. Jesus, make me new on the inside. Amen. I want everybody's eyes up again. If you prayed that prayer, here's what I want you to do. I just don't get nervous. I just want you to tell somebody about it. If you prayed that prayer a minute for the first time, I just want you to tell somebody about it. You can tell me, you can tell the person who brought you, you can tell whoever, you can tell somebody. Here's the other thing I want you to consider. If you follow Jesus, but you are still heavily debilitated by shame and guilt, heavily. I would simply say that where you are dealing

with that shame and guilt, in those places that you're dealing with the shame and guilt, that it's gonna show you holes in what you believe. It's gonna be kind of the edge of what you think is true or possible. That's a really good thing to find. That's a really good thing to find because then you can begin to pray toward that. You can begin to talk about that with people because the reality is you are free. Not living in that freedom as often as you could.

We're gonna pray again, and then we're gonna stand and sing, but we're gonna pray again. I'm gonna pray over you who are still struggling with debilitating shame and guilt. You're walking with the Lord, but you got some holes. You could probably lift them off pretty quickly. We're gonna ask the spirit to begin to heal some of that. Let's pray. Lord, it can often feel like we don't measure up to what you want us to do. It can often feel like we've missed a chance at something that you were bringing. It can often feel like we're not what we should be. And Lord, I just ask that you would help us to remember that you are in charge of our journey. You didn't just save us and say, figure it out.

That you're bringing us on a path of healing. That you're bringing us on a path of joy. Lord, help us to remember that healing, to remember that joy, to experience it, Lord. I pray that you would bring by your spirit that you would bring joy and healing into the places that we don't really like to talk about. I pray that you would help us to experience victory in besetting sins in past shame. I pray that you would help us to meditate on the gospel until it becomes real. That you would renew what's going on inside of us so that we could remember the joy of our salvation. It's your name that we pray, amen.