From the Desk of Steve Shultz:
Katherine Ruonala is a well-respected voice in Australia...I really enjoyed getting to know her and her husband who pastor a church in Brisbane.
I know we've all struggled with guilt and shame in our lives...but God never intended for us to live there!
As we move into the greatest shift we've ever known, God is preparing us to be made new so that He can use us in a mighty way...and part of that preparation is being FREE from whatever is trying to hold you back.
Enjoy this word from Katherine and let God heal every area of guilt that the enemy is trying to keep you trapped in! (To Subscribe to the Elijah List subscribe here.)
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Steve Shultz, Founder and Publisher
The Elijah List & Breaking Christian News
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Years ago when my husband, Tom, and I were in youth group together, we went on a mission trip to Brazil. Our youth leader preached the same message in many different places, so we got to hear it again and again. One illustration in particular has stuck with me ever since. He told the story of a circus bear that had been caged for most of its life. For years, the bear would walk a few meters one way, then turn around and walk a few meters the other way. That was its life—a little bit of room to walk around, back and forth.
Eventually, some animal rights activists protested this confinement and were able to arrange for the bear to be released into the wild, but when the cage was opened and the bear was called out of the cage, he didn't go very far. In fact, he walked a few meters one way, then a few meters the other way, and back again. He was no longer limited by the bars of a cage and could have explored the entire landscape before him, but he kept pacing back and forth because that was all he had known to do. He didn't know what to do with his new freedom.
That's what a lot of Christians do. We've been conditioned to feel the limits of the law, respond to our failures with guilt and shame, and remain in almost the same condition as before. No matter how often many Believers have heard that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, they still live under condemnation long after they have been set free. Even though many talk about being set free from sin, they still see themselves as sinners. Regardless of the "not guilty" verdict God has declared over their lives, many Christians continue to feel guilty. And to think about living in holiness and righteousness, in freedom and power, seems much too presumptuous. They live in a constant hangover of guilt.
Very often, our guilt doesn't actually apply to anything specific. It's just a lingering after-effect of past experiences and mistakes. But we're used to it, aren't we? For most of us, it has been a lifelong experience, so we become captive to it, confined to the limitations we have imagined from our own experience, unaware that we are now outside the cage and can roam wherever the Holy Spirit wants to take us. We can become so conditioned to feeling guilty that we never actually explore what it means to be free.
Freedom from guilt and shame seems too good, too undeserved for us to apply to ourselves. This sense of condemnation—that we have been and always will be sinners, barely rescued by the grace of God, but who still continue to sin—keeps us from having confidence toward Him. And this lack of confidence undermines our faith, our prayers, and our ability to walk in God's power.
Why Your Freedom Matters
Scripture tells us that if we have confidence toward God, we can ask anything according to His will and know—be absolutely sure—that it will be done for us (see 1 John 5:14). It says we can live in this world just as Jesus did (see 1 John 4:17), that we can do the same works that He did, and even greater ones (see John 14:12). It gives us example after example of walking in power, demonstrating the nature of God, expressing His love with confidence and assurance, seeing His Kingdom break into this world through our thoughts, words, and actions; but not if we lack confidence before Him, not if we are captive to our guilt and self-condemnation. No one who is constantly kicking himself or herself is going to be able to live by faith and do the works that Jesus did.
Our captivity to guilt, shame and condemnation limits us. It keeps us from experiencing everything God wants us to receive by faith. If we don't know we're clean, we will not have confidence before God to ask for anything in faith, to know that He is the one at work within us to accomplish His desires, or to actually believe that we can have the desires of our hearts. Our history of captivity says, "Don't you dare consider yourself righteous, holy, or pure. Don't you remember who you are? Only God is holy and good; you clearly are not. Your dreams, desires, and hopes are all sinful. Don't even think that God might fulfill them." (Photo via Piqsels)
If we believe our own feelings rather than what Scripture says about us... (continue reading)
