“For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.”
– Psalm 32:3-4
When we’re on the wrong side of God, embracing a pattern of thought or behavior contrary to His will, it’s a blessing (not a curse) when we feel the heavy weight of God’s conviction. The guilt we feel in these situations is a gift from God, calling us back to Him. It’s a holy invitation to turn to God and genuinely ask His forgiveness.
God is always quick to forgive. Our forgiveness is what Christ died on the cross to secure. When we confess our sins to God and genuinely seek to turn away from them, He forgives us totally and completely and helps us resist the temptation to fall back into those sins.
Once we’ve truly taken our sorrow and repentance to the Lord, we must then truly know that we ARE forgiven. God won’t continue to hold our sins against us, nor will He throw them back in our face later. God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ is absolute.
If we continue to struggle with guilt, that isn’t from the Lord, it’s from ourselves (or the devil). We must forgive ourselves once God has forgiven us. We must preach the gospel to ourselves and remind us that our sin is gone through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross and there’s nothing we can add to that. We must set ourselves free, for God already has!