Season 4 Episode 5: Guilt
Brenda Payne (00:01.763)
Ahem.
Alex Kocher (00:20.108)
Hey Brenda, we're in season four of Wisdom for Life's Common Struggles.
Alex Kocher (00:27.160)
And today we're going to talk about guilt. And I don't know about you, but guilt is, I feel like, almost been a constant companion for me. I grew up in a very conservative Christian culture. And I remember struggling with guilt. My mom loves to tell the story that when I was 12 years old, I heard a sermon by a pastor who said that we should ask the Holy Spirit
Alex Kocher (00:57.034)
us of sin that we weren't recognizing in our lives and I began to fervently pray for that. She said I think you were the only 12 year old I know who was praying to be convicted of sin. But I definitely see how most of my life I've struggled with guilt and guilty feelings and we're gonna talk about some of the differences between that today because guilt can be a really confusing topic.
Brenda Payne (01:06.463)
I'm sorry.
Brenda Payne (01:13.942)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (01:19.262)
It can be, and I know, you know, we've said your struggle is kind of in the area of perfectionism and mine being more in the area of people pleasing. And so with those two struggles in mind, we can really understand why there would be a lot of struggle with guilt. But really, we need to start our discussion about guilt by first understanding how God created us with a moral compass called a conscience. Now I know there might be some of our listeners that are asking, what's a compass? Right?
Alex Kocher (01:26.581)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (01:44.977)
Mm.
Brenda Payne (01:50.777)
But let's just go with this illustration for a moment because I think it is a good one. Basically, what we're saying is our conscience is kind of that innate awareness, that inborn sense of right and wrong. And just like a compass, it's designed to point us in the right direction. And we might kind of recognize it as that small inner voice that we hear sometimes, you know. And the Bible tells us that as image bearers, we all, all of us, have some awareness of the knowledge of God's law in our hearts.
Alex Kocher (01:50.840)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly.
Alex Kocher (01:55.734)
Yes.
Alex Kocher (02:14.088)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (02:19.436)
In fact, Paul told the Romans, the church in Rome, even Gentiles who do not have God's written law show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God's law is written in their hearts for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right.
Brenda Payne (02:41.714)
So when we're talking about conscience, we want to think about three important aspects. First of all, we acknowledge that our conscience was created by God.
But we also need to understand that our conscience has been corrupted by sin, that God's law no longer rules our heart. Our desire is not to know him and to please him. As we were designed to be that changed in Genesis three. And then it has to be corrected by God. Our conscience really has to be restored to God's standard through his word and through the inner work of the Holy Spirit at regeneration.
Alex Kocher (02:56.531)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (03:17.578)
But also, our conscience is going to actually function best when it's continually informed and strengthened by learning the truths of God's Word and yielding to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
You know, I like the verse in Hebrews 5 13 that says, for someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn't know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong. And so we learned that one mark of Christian maturity is when our conscience is programmed and reprogrammed to know and do truth, right?
Brenda Payne (03:51.642)
And I think it's really interesting when we consider that even the secular world, even non-Christians understand how much of a problem that guilt truly is to our life and to our inner being. Dr. Carl Menager, who was a leader in psychiatry for over 70 years, established a world famous research education and treatment center for mental illness, once said this, if he could convince the patients in his psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven, 75% of the
them could walk out the next day. Gosh, Alex, do you hear what he's saying? This means that their primary affliction was actually guilt, and the gospel has the remedy for that.
Alex Kocher (04:25.368)
Wow.
Alex Kocher (04:29.280)
Hmm.
Alex Kocher (04:33.385)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (04:37.312)
Yeah, it feels hard to believe that guilt is a gift because it is such an icky feeling. It doesn't feel good. I think it's good for us to begin to distinguish between guilt and shame and we kind of decided that we didn't have enough time here today to cover shame also. So we're going to focus primarily on guilt and we're going to distinguish guilt as that
Alex Kocher (05:07.306)
when we violated a standard of right and wrong. So where shame is the feeling like something's wrong with me, guilt goes back to I've done something wrong, I violated the standard. But it is still accompanied by feelings of distress, like we don't like the way we feel, they're unpleasant, they're unwelcome. And it's a well-known fact that when we carry guilt around, we weaken our bodies, it makes us soul-sick and body-sick.
week. I think about this passage in Psalm 38 a lot because it so mirrors my own physical experience but David says things in that Psalm like there's no soundness in my flesh because of your anger there's no health in my bones because of my sin my iniquities have gone over my head like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me my wounds are foul and festering because of my
Alex Kocher (06:07.206)
I am bowed down greatly. I go mourning all day long for my loins are full of inflammation. There is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and severely broken. I groan because of the turmoil of my heart." Like there's some real vivid descriptors of how we feel when we hold guilt in our bodies and the way that it affects us both body and soul.
Brenda Payne (06:23.896)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (06:33.484)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (06:36.854)
you
And so I feel like one of the things we need to recognize is really since the beginning of time, since the Garden of Eden, we have been trying to find ways to deal with our guilt. Ever since Adam and Eve fell into sin, they decided to use or turn their guilt into two things that we all do. And they decided to point and they decided to, or point and cover, yes.
and cover. And so they made they literally made coverings for themselves so that God couldn't see them that they couldn't see each other and they also decided to blame one another. And we do that in a lot of different ways. We blame other people when we compare, where we try to make ourselves better than someone else, where we manipulate and try to change standards so that it doesn't look like that we've transgressed something, when we just straight out
Brenda Payne (07:21.400)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (07:36.033)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (07:37.474)
did it. And then we also hide and we cover when we redefine right and wrong, when we try to cover ourselves with good works, we try to do a lot of things to make us feel like we're better than the guilt feelings that we have, where we try to silence our conscience because we're using substances or comfort measures to silence our conscience, and where we minimize our sin and we say that it's really not as bad as God says it is.
Brenda Payne (08:07.010)
Guilty, I'm guilty. Think I've done all of those. Well, one of the things we wanted to talk about was just kind of this difference between feeling guilty versus being guilty. Clearly Adam and Eve felt guilty and they responded to that feeling by blaming and covering. But they actually were guilty as well. And so we think this is an important distinction to make. Feeling guilty is what we're gonna call subjective guilt and being guilty, we're gonna call objective guilt.
Alex Kocher (08:07.034)
Cheers!
Alex Kocher (08:10.974)
Yeah, really.
Alex Kocher (08:30.741)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (08:37.484)
So subjective guilt is a feeling, not the fact that I'm responsible for an offense. For instance, I might feel guilty when somebody gets their feelings hurt. This happened just this weekend. Paul and I were visiting some friends and the wife wanted us to stay for a longer visit, but my very pragmatic husband knew that it would be more efficient and better for us to leave early and get on home so we could, you know, take the rest of our Sunday to prepare for the week.
Alex Kocher (08:52.938)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (09:06.944)
I could tell that my friend's feelings were a little bit hurt, right? That I had disappointed her and I had that really uneasy feeling that I was doing something wrong because she was feeling, you know, because I'd hurt her feelings basically. So when we're experiencing feelings of guilt, we need to ask, have I broken the law of God?
Alex Kocher (09:12.496)
Mm, mm-hmm. Yeah.
Alex Kocher (09:20.929)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (09:24.917)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (09:29.546)
Because sin is defined by God, not by us, not by other people. And we need to always check our guilty feelings against the facts of God's Word. So I think there's kind of these three questions that I ask myself sometimes when I'm trying to evaluate is this guilt fact or fiction? You know, first of all, what happened to cause the guilty feeling? What specific aspect of this do I feel guilty about? And then to really say, did I really do something wrong as God defines it, or am
Alex Kocher (09:35.306)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (09:59.740)
wrong and feeling bad about it. Right? So, guilty feelings are a gift, as you mentioned. They really are, but they're only a gift when they drive us quickly to repentance. Because, you know, if not, then this heavy burden becomes a source of condemnation.
Alex Kocher (10:03.157)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (10:10.592)
Hmm.
Brenda Payne (10:18.566)
And condemnation is maybe we could say the gift from Satan, right? To the gift that keeps on taking. Um, and the scripture calls Satan the accuser of the brethren. And what happens when we feel condemned? It's going to lead to self-contempt or self-hatred. It's going to drive us away from God. Like we're really going to want to hide when, when we think that we're being condemned, when we're waiting to be judged and the hammer's going to drop, then we're going to be running into a place of, you know,
Alex Kocher (10:20.395)
Mm.
Alex Kocher (10:25.888)
Hmm... Hmm-hmm... Hmm-hmm...
Alex Kocher (10:31.649)
Mm.
Brenda Payne (10:48.560)
God away from people and this really makes us feel you know hopeless in a lot of ways and the scripture encourages us if our hearts condemn us we know that God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything he knows everything he knows every single thing we're gonna confess and so and he is continually you know the more I studied the Old Testament I used to think the Old Testament was all about this angry God who's just waiting to beat up his people when they sin and the more I read it and the more I study it the more I realize
Alex Kocher (11:08.824)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (11:15.746)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (11:18.380)
it is a constant invitation to turn from our sin and to run to the Lord because there's no condemnation for his people. He loves us. He wants relationship with us.
Alex Kocher (11:29.188)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (11:32.984)
Yeah, I like the contrast between this subjective and objective guilt. I think it's a good good questions for us to ask when we have that icky feeling like okay what's really going on and so in contrast is subjective guilt the objective guilt is when I've actually violated the law like that's a fact so if I'm speeding and I'm really guilty of breaking the law by speeding it doesn't really matter if the cop pulls me over and says I don't feel like I was speeding
Brenda Payne (12:00.909)
Right
Alex Kocher (12:02.978)
He's got the radar to prove that I was beating. I have broken the law and so You know, we have to really recognize those places we have to know God's Word enough to understand and know when we are breaking God's law because the Bible says that everyone who is breaking Everyone who sins is breaking God's law and all sin is contrary to the law of God John Henderson has an interesting quote. He says that every single transgression deserves death every sinful thought every sinful work
every moment of grumbling, every false accusation, every lust, every misguided fear, every single desire, every single wrongful action is worthy of swift and eternal death. And that's a heavy, heavy quote when we realize the burden of guilt that is on us. And it's hard to recognize that a real reckoning with guilt is good for our souls, but I think what we need to remember is that as
Brenda Payne (12:45.396)
It is.
Brenda Payne (12:48.562)
Yeah. Yeah.
Brenda Payne (12:55.842)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (13:02.538)
have to worry about facing God's wrath because He made provision for us in Christ. So we shouldn't forget the serious nature of our sin, but we should realize that one, we have provision in Christ and two, He brings conviction to continue to pursue relationship with us. And so we have that feeling of conviction, the conviction of the Holy Spirit who gives us an awareness of our
Brenda Payne (13:20.158)
Yes.
Alex Kocher (13:32.578)
back to the Father to move back into a close fellowship with Him. And I like to remember that it's the Holy Spirit's job to convict us and we don't have to... when I get stuck in this debate of is this conviction or condemnation, I remind myself that the Holy Spirit is not trying to play a game with me. So it
Brenda Payne (13:55.553)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (14:02.718)
But we want to make some distinctions because I think it's important. It's kind of that time at 3 o'clock in the morning when we wake up and we have the icky feelings. And these are some things we can kind of ask ourselves or remind ourselves that condemnation is aimed at like a general accusation. It focuses on the problem. It increases guilty feelings. It tells us that there's something wrong with us as a person. Whereas conviction is
Alex Kocher (14:32.298)
the Holy Spirit's not trying to play a game with us. He's going to convict us of specific sin. It's not going to be that you're such a loser. It's going to be you spoke harshly to your husband. It's going to be very specific and that condemnation leads us often to despair but conviction leads us to repentance and I think that again it leads us to repentance because it's giving us
Alex Kocher (15:02.318)
us back into relationship with him.
Brenda Payne (15:03.146)
Yeah, well, I think those are such great reminders because.
Brenda Payne (15:08.718)
Condemnation, just the fruit of that is so terrible. But conviction, like we need to rejoice when conviction comes because the fruit of that can be so beautiful. But you know, Alex, in a court of law, conviction is that public pronouncement of wrongdoing and the executing of punishment or justice. But we've said this before, and we're going to say it again. For the Christian, the courtroom is closed. Gavel has been slammed, right? Justice has been executed, and punishment
Alex Kocher (15:19.599)
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Alex Kocher (15:34.361)
Mmm. The courtroom is closed. Mmm.
Brenda Payne (15:38.672)
the cross. And that's why I look back to, you know, the doctor, the psychiatrist, and how he's walking through the psych ward, realizing that 75% of these people could walk out tomorrow if they knew this, that they could be declared righteous through Christ's work, and if they accepted his punishment on the cross.
Alex Kocher (15:42.847)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (15:48.236)
Hmm.
Alex Kocher (15:53.814)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (15:59.714)
Mm.
You know, I've had a recent really powerful experience with this courtroom analogy and I hope I can convey it well, but for a whole bunch of background I'm not going to get into, my husband had to testify in a murder trial recently. He was the only witness for the defendant in a murder trial and so many spiritual lessons
Alex Kocher (16:30.630)
experience but particularly when both sides the defense and the prosecution gave their closing argument the judge calls the jury in and he gives a charge in the courtroom with everyone watching and listening he charges the jury of what their duty is in finding a sentence and he said something that I hope I
Alex Kocher (17:01.150)
it is that the defendant, the person accused of the crime, is actually cloaked in innocence until the evidence of guilt pierces the cloak. And I'm sitting there going, oh my word!
like this is such biblical language. I don't know if this man's a believer or not, but such biblical language. So the defendant is cloaked in innocence until the evidence of guilt pierces the cloak of innocence. Of course, as a believer, I'm sitting there going, that's not true. Actually, I'm cloaked in guilt and I have to be unclogued in order to be declared
Brenda Payne (17:33.944)
Hehehehehehe Mmm
Brenda Payne (17:41.996)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (17:50.007)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Alex Kocher (17:50.042)
truly cloaked in innocence is Jesus. And he was willing to be pierced with our guilt in order that we could be cloaked in his innocence. And so it was just such a beautiful language and such a beautiful reminder that when we are in the courtroom of God, we don't have to worry that we are cloaked in guilt. We can claim Christ's righteousness for our own
Brenda Payne (18:18.071)
Mmm.
Alex Kocher (18:20.602)
powerful reminder that the courtroom scene is it for Christians. Like we have to remember it. We have to take ourselves back there. We have to go back to our justification and remember that the courtroom is closed, the verdict is in, and we've been declared not guilty.
Brenda Payne (18:36.267)
Wow.
What a timely, I love that the Lord gives us so many illustrations at the time we're about to do a podcast. What a timely illustration. That's a powerful, powerful, just spiritual reality there in that story. Thank you for sharing that and your poor husband. Just thinking bless his heart. How stressful. Yeah, how stressful. Well, in each one of these episodes, we've been giving a soul tool and a body tool. And so really the soul tool for
Alex Kocher (18:42.979)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (18:54.176)
Mm-hmm. Mm. So stressful. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (19:05.110)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (19:06.626)
guilt is going to be confession. Right, and we're gonna talk about a tool that will take us through how to actually make a good confession. But in our battle with ongoing sin, scripture teaches us that our conscience is made clean through the confession of sin on the grounds of the sacrifice of Christ. And in the Greek, the word confession really just means to say the same thing. So when we confess our sin, we're just simply agreeing with God about our sin.
Alex Kocher (19:11.436)
Hmm.
Alex Kocher (19:30.660)
Mmm.
Brenda Payne (19:33.644)
And in a biblical confession, we bring the darkness of our sin, and this is beautiful, into the light of God's mercy, right?
Alex Kocher (19:35.071)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (19:41.346)
God desires and delights in mercy. In fact, I think it was in Jeremiah where I read it says, you know, he doesn't delight in discipline. He doesn't delight in having to chastise his children any more than I think as a parent. I just remember when I was having to discipline my children, like I did it because it was good for them, but I didn't want to, I delighted. It's like, just do what's right. I just want to, I just want to delight in mercy with you. Come on, you know. Um, but it is his promise that we're never going to experience the punishment we deserve for our sins.
Alex Kocher (19:44.092)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (19:52.392)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Alex Kocher (19:59.773)
Oh, mm-hmm. Right.
Alex Kocher (20:07.606)
Bye.
Brenda Payne (20:11.680)
but we will receive forgiveness and cleansing like that's the power of confession first John 1 9 if We confess our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us this conscience right this guilty conscience from all unrighteousness and Of course Paul trip is one of my favorite Counselors and pastors and he's got a talk called confession is grace, which I think we will post in our show notes It's so good And basically he says confession is grace
Alex Kocher (20:26.880)
Hmm.
Alex Kocher (20:37.663)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (20:41.240)
naturally see the seriousness of our sin, or want to expose our sin, or want to run to the Lord for mercy in our sin, or actually desire transformation from our sin. So if you see someone confessing their sin, you can know that God is at work in them, right?
Alex Kocher (20:55.539)
Right.
Brenda Payne (21:00.390)
This past week I had some young women over for dinner and some time around the fire pit and one of the gals had really just gotten caught up in sexual sin and guilt and shame were just overwhelming her, had moved her away from God and further fellowship from other Christians and she was just describing just what we're talking about, just wanting to hide, knowing she was guilty but that guilt, she was just being so condemned, she was just
Alex Kocher (21:01.804)
Hmm, yeah.
Brenda Payne (21:30.544)
This is just who she was. She would never change. All the things that her heart and Satan could throw at her. But her confession was such a beautiful and holy moment for the rest of us as we sat there. Right? As we could just, as we saw this broken woman coming to now invite, rather than run from God and from the body of Christ, run to God and to the body of Christ. And right now I'm in the book of Hosea in my quiet time. And so, of course, it reminded me.
Alex Kocher (21:43.084)
Hmm
Brenda Payne (22:00.064)
of the story of Hosea and Gomer, where Hosea is told to go love this unfaithful wife. And I just thought, while my friend's sin was so great, it highlighted the grace and mercy of God to the unfaithful. And it actually reminded all of us sitting there that we're all whores, right? Each one of us. It wasn't like we're going like, you're the whore and we're the righteous. It's like, no, no, no, no. Your confession reminds me that I'm the whore too. I'm the one looking for other lovers.
Alex Kocher (22:04.214)
Hmm.
Alex Kocher (22:09.204)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (22:22.604)
Hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Brenda Payne (22:30.004)
to satisfy longings only God can fill. Maybe I do it different, but we're all prone to sell our souls out for the moments of pleasures, moments of belonging. But thank God, Alex, God was wooing her back. And this is one of my favorite verses in Hosea. It's Hosea 2.14 that says, Therefore, behold, I will allure her back. God's talking about his people here. And bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.
Alex Kocher (22:31.392)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (22:40.895)
Hmm.
Alex Kocher (22:46.740)
Hmm.
Brenda Payne (22:55.922)
And the great preacher Charles Spurgeon wrote this, this is a singular kind of power. I will allure her, not I will drive her, not even I will draw her, or I will drag her, or I will force her. No, I will allure her. It is a very remarkable word, and it teaches us that the allurement of love surpasses in power all other forces.
Alex Kocher (22:57.845)
Mmm.
Alex Kocher (23:06.604)
Hmm.
Brenda Payne (23:21.982)
And that's, that's, it's so beautiful. And that's what God wants in conviction. Like conviction is that allurement. It's not, if it's coming as condemnation, it's not from the Lord. It should be coming as this allurement. Come back to my love. You've left me for other lovers. Come back.
Alex Kocher (23:24.177)
It's beautiful
Alex Kocher (23:34.696)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (23:39.007)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (23:39.626)
And I think about, you know, what if my friend had rejected God's love and ignored or suppressed her conscience? She would have just continued to go deeper and deeper into her sin and further away from God. And I'm reminded of Paul's warning to Timothy, you know, where he says, cling to your faith in Christ, keep a clear conscience, because some people have deliberately violated their conscience and their faith has been shipwrecked.
Alex Kocher (23:42.292)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (24:04.714)
And one final thought on this, Alex, I was thinking yesterday, Paul and I got home from being out of town, and right when we walked in the door, we could hear our fire alarm beeping about every two minutes. You know, that annoying beep, and then you wait, you think, well, what's that noise, and beep, and then you're like, well, maybe it's gonna stop. And I really felt bad for my dog, because she had been here for 24 hours, and I thought that had to have been maddening. But you know, imagine if my husband had gotten the ladder and a hammer, and climbed the ladder, which by the way,
Alex Kocher (24:07.629)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (24:16.312)
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.
Alex Kocher (24:21.442)
Yep.
Brenda Payne (24:34.708)
an effort too because we have vaulted ceilings in our bedroom and we were like who puts the fire alarm at the top of the vault? It was treacherous! So anyhow imagine if he climbed up there with his ladder and just began smashing the fire alarm or if he took the battery out. You know the noise would have stopped but he but we would be completely unaware if our house caught on fire.
Alex Kocher (24:34.710)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (24:40.042)
Ooh.
Alex Kocher (24:42.552)
Ha ha!
Alex Kocher (24:46.816)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (24:51.816)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (24:57.022)
And that's the same picture of guilt. We can silence it, but unrepentant sin can destroy our faith in life. And God knows that, and He loves us too much to allow us to continue down that road.
Alex Kocher (24:59.780)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (25:12.276)
Yeah, I just love that you're presenting this picture of conviction being gentle and...
loving and it's a wooing us back. It reminds me, I think in season one we did a podcast on the gospel waltz that the rhythm of the Christian life should be confess, believe, love. And that I think we say in there that that conviction is the Holy Spirit inviting us back to the dance and it should feel like a relational, invitational prompting from the
Brenda Payne (25:24.075)
Yes.
Brenda Payne (25:36.212)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (25:49.482)
we were just programmed that that we think the voice of God and the Holy Spirit is harsh and demanding and that he is not like that that he is wooing us back to relationship with him so I love I love that picture of Hosea and Gomer and the way that the spirit works and so we thought that in addition to just
Alex Kocher (26:18.782)
kind of adapted this from Ken Sandy's Peacemaker ministry. He gives the seven A's of confession, how to make a good confession, a thorough confession. And so we're just going to kind of go back and forth in these seven A's. The first one is address everyone that is involved. God first, always in our sin, but sin is always personal against God, but then there are other people involved. So when
Alex Kocher (26:48.622)
everyone who's involved in the zone.
Brenda Payne (26:49.310)
And I just need to say these are all alliterations because we know how much we love those. Thank you, Ken Sandy. So number two is avoid ifs, buts, maybes, and whens. And the reason why is because these words undermine our confession. And really they lead us to the very thing that Adam and Eve were guilty of. We're blaming, we're minimizing, we're denying.
Alex Kocher (26:56.129)
We love the A's.
Alex Kocher (27:02.610)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (27:11.726)
And at the end of the day, there really are no valid excuses to sin. You know, there may be some, some, um...
Some ways we can say, well, we can understand why that temptation would be hard. We can understand why somebody would have given into that sin, but actually saying that, you know, somebody made me sin or something or something made me sin, um, is actually not true. So we want to avoid those kind of buzzwords. And honestly, when we're talking to somebody else, it really, um, doesn't, it lacks sincerity, right? If I go to somebody and say, will you please forgive me? But if you just hadn't, it's like, really?
Alex Kocher (27:37.496)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (27:50.544)
because that doesn't sound like you're really serious about your own sin. There'll be a time to talk to somebody about their sin if they sin too, but in your confession, you go and you talk about your sin.
Alex Kocher (27:56.845)
Mm.
Alex Kocher (28:03.480)
Right, yeah. And then third, you want to admit it all. You want to use specifics, not generalities. You want to take a hundred percent of responsibility for your part. So you're going to take an inventory of kind of the inner sins, the thoughts, the motives, the attitudes, as well as the outer sins, which would be the words or the actions of the sin.
Brenda Payne (28:21.890)
Yep.
The fourth one is acknowledge the impact of your choices and show sorrow over hurting and offending God and other people. And I think this is something we often don't do. Because a lot of times, even in part of our hiding, is we wanna get through our confession really quickly, and we don't really wanna stop and think about or ask how we've really hurt somebody. I think that's really important if we're gonna show a sincerity. And not only that, but I think God uses that. When somebody tells me
sin has hurt them, that is a great motivator. When I consider how my sin has hurt the glory of God or my witness for God, that becomes a great motivator for me to want to change.
Alex Kocher (29:07.081)
Yep.
Alex Kocher (29:08.392)
This is a hard one. The next day is accept the consequences of our sin. So confession doesn't mean that we're absolved of discipline from the Lord or just natural consequences. So we can choose our sin but we can't always choose our consequences. So we have to be willing to accept the consequences and then consider if there's any place where we can make
Brenda Payne (29:11.040)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (29:36.212)
Yeah.
And I think you're right. That one is really hard. I think about Galatians, you know, God will not be mocked as a man sows, he reaps, and oftentimes, you know, we are praying for a crop failure when we've done something, but we're going to have to eat of that crop maybe for a little bit. And that's a hard one. Number six is ask for forgiveness. And we're not even going to go into that one because we have a whole season, season two on forgiveness. So please, if you haven't heard it, go listen to it. I actually really love this season and we really spell out forgiveness.
Alex Kocher (30:02.358)
Yes.
Brenda Payne (30:07.641)
and making your way back toward restoration with people. So yeah, go listen to that season.
Alex Kocher (30:14.497)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (30:16.496)
And number seven is alter your attitudes and actions. So just like we said in the Gospel Waltz, confession is just the beginning of repentance. It's the first step. It should be a catalyst for change. And so where we alter our behaviors, where we said with the Gospel Waltz, that would be the believe part, change what we believe about God, who he is and what he's done, and then act in love towards God and others. The beauty of making a confession like this is that mercy is promised
Alex Kocher (30:46.990)
and renounces their sin. So it can be beneficial to think through what what we would have done differently, how we intend it to be done differently in the future. And so again, if you want to know more about a good confession, we'll have this seven A's of confession from Ken Sandy as a handout. And we also have the season one podcast on the Gospel Waltz. So in addition to giving a soul
tool. We've also wanted to give a body tool for each podcast and we've really wrestled with how to give a body tool for guilt.
Alex Kocher (31:26.856)
And the more I've thought about this over the last few days in anticipation of recording this today, I really think that what it comes down to is if we believe what God says that our guilt is covered with Christ's righteousness, then really the body tool would be rest. Like we would really fully and completely come to rest in our body and our spirit. We would cease striving to prove our own righteousness or to cover our sin, and we would trust God.
And so I think that we really need to look at our rest practices. We need to look at our practices of evening, evening, morning, you know, type rest, like what our activity versus our rest looks like on any given day. We need to look at our Sabbath practices. And I think we need to look at those places where we're tempted to, I know for me, the guilty feelings I carried for most of my life
Alex Kocher (32:27.370)
of me where I am an over producer so I go in and I do do do do do and that do do doing makes me feel like I
can justify myself. And so to really come to a place of rest, physical rest is actually a spiritual issue for me to take time to rest physically actually brings up a lot of guilty feelings, subjective guilt, condemnation that I have to then remind myself of truth so that I can come down and I can be in places where I'm just enjoying and not performing.
Brenda Payne (33:02.462)
Yeah, I think just the doing, doing, doing is the covering. I just think about we wanna tip the scales. If I feel guilty, then I wanna do things to tip the scales so I don't feel so guilty.
Alex Kocher (33:10.677)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (33:13.106)
but we know that just doesn't work. That's like putting a bandaid on a bleeding out artery. And I think we really just saw this as like, this is preventative care because unresolved guilt is gonna lead to physical issues and spiritual problems like anxiety and depression. We know that. Psalm 32 and 38 tell us that, but also we can look around and we experientially know that. So we just need to, maybe some of the other body tools were kind of like medicine and this one's our preventative care. So confession is really, really an important part
Alex Kocher (33:15.195)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (33:19.127)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (33:24.958)
Yeah.
Alex Kocher (33:35.839)
Right.
Alex Kocher (33:41.929)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (33:42.800)
part of...
you know, the most important how we're going to deal with guilt in a way that's going to bring wholeness and healing and rest to our body and our soul. So Alex, that is a wrap on guilt. We said we knew this one was going to be a little headier because there was a lot more just doctrine, if you will, that we wanted to share. But I hope that we have broken it down in a way that's digestible and where our listeners can take this and actually begin to examine themselves and their
Alex Kocher (34:01.749)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (34:14.908)
guilty. And as always in all of our conversational counseling podcasts, our desire is that in knowing how to do this well, they will see the glory and the beauty of Christ and the love of God the Father and will be captivated by Him and run to Him. Right? Not just slowly walk but like run when they are under conviction, confessing their sin and throwing them at the mercy of a Father who is always wooing us back to right relationship with Him.