Guilty Pleasures

If only real high school was filled with bad actors, cheesy dialogue, and people who say "oot" instead of "out", then I might have actually wanted to attend. Alas, I am stuck enjoying my guilty pleasure, the Canadian TV show "Degrassi: The Next Generation". Now, if you don't currently watch Degrassi, please for the love of everything righteous and holy DO NOT WATCH IT, because you will become addicted. But unfortunately this post is not about Degrassi; however, it is about our guilty pleasures (and not the cute-comfortable ones like Degrassi). The kind of guilty pleasures I'm writing about are the ones that keep you up at night. Maybe it's not even a habit. Maybe it's just guilt over something you never thought you'd do, but it's still there waking you up in the middle of the night. So, when you find yourself in the situation where you're being haunted by the past or you feel like you've gone too far to be forgiven, what do you do?

We learned on Sunday that when we're faced with our sin we have two choices: Godly sorrow (a temporary sadness which leads to repentance and salvation) and worldly sorrow (a lasting sadness which leads to a spiritual and emotional death). You might ask, "if worldly sorrow leads to death, why would anyone ever choose it?” Well, if Godly sorrow leads to repentance and repentance leads to salvation and salvation is gained by surrendering our rights to Christ, then the answer might simply be: we don't want to surrender. When we choose to deal with our guilt on our own, we believe that we can handle our situation better than God. We beat ourselves up over our guilt or we try and resolve the situation on our own, and all the while our heart is still heavy from the weight of our guilt. David, a man who understood guilt better than most, explains how we might be able to remove our guilt while also changing ourselves in the process, in a prayer he wrote to God:

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. -Psalm 51:10.

If we ask God to create for us a clean heart and a renewed spirit, then we might not only be free of our guilt, but more resistant to our temptations that led us to that guilt. David, the man after God's own heart, understood that only after we have a new heart, a clean heart, can we begin to live the life God is calling us too. As we know, there is nothing we can ever do that is too terrible for God to forgive, so why do we continue living like our sin is worse than anybody else's? God wants to create a pure heart within us, all we have to do is lay down our pride and ask for His help.


Explore and Pray
Read and pray along with David's prayer of redemption in Psalm 51:1-17

Homework
Prepare an answer for discussion on Sunday
What is the difference between having a blueprint for something and a plan for it?