Guilty !

In my last post, I mentioned that the high school pastor has a website. On the website, he has a feature for the high school kids called Psalm of the Day... where each day of the year is associated with a Psalm in order of how it is in the Bible. The website also has blogs from him and his friend Brad... and a bunch of other things. The site is www.godsongmusic.com. Anyway, this post is from March 18 and inspired by this particular Psalm, Psalm 77. I put my original post in italics to have this blog make a little more sense.

The first is a simple, I am just sinful and fall short of God. Since I read it after church today, it brought me back to the sermon in the first 1/3 of the service where Pastor Mike was talking about Peter when he was first began to follow Christ in the gospel of Luke. Christ told Peter to throw the nets on the right side of the boat and the nets broke because there were so many fish after an entire night of no fish. Peter said, "Get away from me, I am a sinful man". That's what I posted on the site, which was the first thing that came to mind. Or at least that the verses reminded me of how sinful I am, I didn't say anything about Peter. I was too tired to post anything else that would make any sort of sense.

But, in a much more meaningful way... Psalm 77:3-4 also talks about the weight guilt has. "3 I remembered you, O God, and I groaned; I mused, and my spirit grew faint. 4 You kept my eyes from closing; I was too troubled to speak." This pattern is also definitely seen in Psalm 32, one that I always have to turn to when I consider why I am so restless and anxious and can't sleep. Unfortunately this week I didn't realize how much guilt I was living with until this morning... again, in church... but the last third of the sermon. Pastor Mike was talking about guilt. And talking about how Peter was going back to fishing and back to his old life when Jesus appeared on the Sea of Gallillee. The whole exchange of Jesus talking to Peter about feeding his sheep and not giving up on the mission He gave Peter and the other disciples. I can't explain why it struck me in a way it never has before... sure, I've heard POWERFUL sermons on this exact set of scripture, but it was a sharp pang of guilt this morning. Of the many points Pastor Mike had, the one that hit me the hardest was that the only thing guilt should bring a person to do is confess their sin... he referred to Psalm 103:12 and Isaiah 1:18 and said that once we confess the sin, we need to let the guilt go.

Letting the guilt go is crucial for being/remaining close to God. It can become a barrier. And if you didn't think those consequences were bad enough, the physical consequences make your dealings with life and with people much worse. I only speak from experience on that. :)