The Overcoming Series

Part 2: Overcoming Guilt and Shame

We may spend our lives looking back at all the things we wished we had done differently and feel a sense of regret, but we should look at those things as learning experiences and see them as obstacles that we overcame to see how far we have come from who we used to be, that indeed brought us closer to Christ.

We might have lost a few things along the way. Our sanity, for a time, a person we dearly loved and cherished, or some choice we made that had a disastrous affect on another person’s life. Oh, how if we could, we would do things differently.

I recall an excerpt from one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption, where Morgan Freeman gives a stunning performance when he’s being reviewed by the Board for parole. “Oh, how I’d love to sit that boy down and talk to him, and tell him not to do that terrible thing.” I think we’ve all felt like that.

Through the sins that we’ve committed, I think we are able to see how those choices we made affected other people. And, isn’t that why the Laws of Moses were given to the people? First, that those things we do, do not hurt God, but secondly, and being the second most important commandment that Jesus has given, loving thy neighbor as thyself, that we do not hurt other people.

It may be that what happened to us was completely out of our control, and that we had no say in the matter whatsoever. We tried our dead hardest best to the best of our ability to achieve what we had set out to do, and it failed, that we can see the lesson in it. The lesson is that we are relying on our own ability of ourselves in order to complete the goals. If we were the most brilliant of all scholars in our area of study, but we couldn’t pass the test, then we can see that God has another plan! Yes, he does! God knows the future, and we don’t. We can’t see that what has caused us years of regret, guilt, and shame was in fact a divine intervention sparing us from some future of catastrophic affects to our own lives or to the detriment of someone else’s. We would’ve had to make some hard choices. Live, or die. For example, had I completed my final exam with an A+ to become a Nurse, I would’ve had to take that shot to keep my job. And, as many of you, that made the right choice not to take it lost their livelihoods and reputations in order to do so, your conscience is clean. But, would I have had the right information at that distant future time to know it was wrong if I were consumed in the throws of the Nursing life in whatever position or capacity, to get the right information to make the right judgement? Had I not been bound to the computer at the time of covid trying to file for unemployment when I was laid off from being an employee of 30 years, that I discovered the truth about what was really going on with the ID2020 agenda? That sent me on a long journey of discovering the players and truths of what was about to happen on a global scale, to everyone. But God in his all knowing grace and mercy spared me from it, and he turned what was once what seemed like a lifetime of pain and suffering

into a celebration! Had I not been where I was serving and living a life of service in another way, I could have been the instrument of death to other people by giving it, or by carrying out the deadly regimen protocol, because I would have had to carry out the Doctor’s Orders as part of my job. Nurses use their own knowledge and interventions for disease process symptoms, but ultimately, they’re there to carry out the Doctor’s Orders. And, we’ve learned from experience over the past 4 years, that Doctors were incentivized to administer the Federally recommended protocols and follow the restrictions of using a plethora of medicines that could have helped.

I don’t regret the six years I spent going to Nursing school. I made some of the best friends you could have, and I learned and still retain everything they taught me. It helped me to take better care of my family, and I’m not in the dark when it comes to what is going on in any given medical or hospital setting. I have retained my knowledge, and they can’t take that away from me. It wasn’t intended for me to use it legally. I believe in healing, if you want to know the truth about it. My Physician is not of this world, and only he has the power to heal. Doctors can help us, but there are many things that even Doctors can’t explain, deny, or understand about miracles.

When I was in Nursing School, there wasn’t much room for that theory. In fact, I was expected to abandon my faith to ultimately carry out what man has recommended for sickness and disease. I believe in medicine, but more than that, I believe in the one who created what we use to treat people with. He’s given men knowledge and skill to come up with medical treatments and advances, and we understand more now about what to do through trial and error, but it hasn’t been within our own strength and ability to do them, but only by the grace and mercy of God to us to show us what we should do. The first thing we ought to do is pray, which seems to be in short supply in the medical realm of healing. There are Hospitals of Sisters that I have been privileged to work at, and I think it’s a good thing! Faith based medicine is where it’s at.

I can’t tell you how to overcome guilt and shame without telling you this story, because it was the way that I learned it. I spent many years in tears frankly, an emotional exhaustion of sorrow, that was masked by doing other things to kill the pain. Maybe you’re there now, and the masking has became a way of life because the seed root of the problem has not been dealt with. We face it! Head on! Like we’re on a crash course collision with destiny! Look at it! Let the Lord show you the real truth about it, and you can easily overcome it with his help. You can’t do it on your own, because part of the lesson is realizing that it’s not about relying on our own ability to be our own independent sources of wealth and existence, or how we want ourselves to be seen as perceived by others. Those ideals of self exaltation are placed there by the devil an effort to make us see ourselves as gods. We’re deceived by it. When we start seeing ourselves as humble servants, devoid of our own lives, but living them the way the Holy Spirit directs at any given moment, then we’ve arrived. We’ve abandoned all of the avenues that we have set for ourselves to instead follow his on a pathway of righteousness on the highway of holiness.

There is no condemnation to those who love the Lord and who are called according to his purposes. We have to forgive ourselves by seeing the blood of Christ washing us clean. It isn’t in our own ability that we can lay off this burden of guilt and shame. Paul also said that so were some of you before we met Christ, for those things that we are now ashamed. And we can be ashamed of the way we used to be and own it, but we don’t have to carry it with us. We can leave it at the foot of the cross, nailed to it, and see where God has brought us from that we no longer would even consider doing such a thing. In fact, we may not even recognize who that person was. It may seem foreign to us that we would or could make that choice, but we didn’t have the knowledge God has given us at the time, and we can’t regret that, because that is the lesson. Learning from our mistakes, and relying on God’s perfect provision and way of escape that would have brought us to something even greater that would have destroyed our lives we are living that are guarded and protected by him. We need to keep our eyes on Christ, and not on our own past choices, mistakes, and failures that bring up the feelings of guilt and shame. We are only going to find him, either way, but it is going to shorten your suffering if you can learn the lessons from it sooner than later, and you are going to have a better quality of life to serve him with. We can’t go around defeated and maimed if we are to be exuding victory, now can we? No! We are victorious because the battle has been won, even if we’re a little late to the party to apply it to the lives he’s given us to choose him.

If the devil can keep us focused on ourselves, and accuse us of how unworthy we are, then it’s taking our minds off Christ. The devil wants us focused on ourselves! That’s how he gets us and keeps us. If we’ve up until this time rehearsed the problems, torn ourselves down, and have hit rock bottom, be grateful for being there, because it is only when we have humbled ourselves and our heart is broken that we can find these truths. Jesus said I have come to heal the brokenhearted and give deliverance to the captive, and he does!

So just own it, look at it, ask him to show you the truth about it, and let him bear the burden of it, because he already has. He can release us from the bondage and captivity of whatever it is that is consuming our lives, and he can set us free from it. The truth will set you free, and it does! Amen.