I still feel guilty!

It was a long time ago, but it takes seconds only for me to feel that same guilt.  I rationalized the sin at the time, but I knew it was wrong and offensive to God, but that did not stop me, at least for a while.  Then I got it! And turned from it and pleaded with God for his forgiveness, which he is always ready to give.  Have you ever been there?  And days and months and years later, the memory of that time sneaks right up on you asking who you think you are to think you can serve God now.

I am sure that was Paul’s experience. We meet him early in the book of Acts as Saul and The Message puts it this way, “And Saul just went wild, devastating the church, entering house after house after house, dragging men and women off to jail.”  And that was right after we see him holding the coats of and congratulating Stephen’s killers.

Some time later God pursued Saul, changing his life, and the newly named Paul, after a period of study put all that same energy into building the Church, preaching to the lost and teaching the found.  As I was reading there in Acts 7 and 8 where it tells about Saul/Paul’s early years, I wrote in the margin, “a basis for guilt,” because Paul would never be able to forget what he had done. But, he did not allow those feelings of guilt, not real guilt because he was no longer carrying around that burden of sin; God had forgiven him, to keep him from serving God.

I wonder if all believers are not sometimes haunted by our past, certainly a work of the evil one, who will use our past to cripple our present if we let him.  Paul speaks of his thorn in the flesh, saying he had asked God three times to remove it.  And God said, in II Corinthians 12:9, “…My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Paul replied, “Most gladly will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

Many commentators suggest Paul was referring to his vision, that he had pain or some illness or injury to his eyes, perhaps from his encounter on the road to Emmaus. But it occurred to me this morning to wonder if his thorn in the flesh might have been the heavy weight he felt knowing that he had persecuted and even caused the death of Christians in the early church.  Can you imagine how that might feel, or be used of the evil one?

Anyway, once more, I thank God for his forgiveness, that he has put all of my sins as far as the east is from the west, Psalm 103: 12.  I thank God that it is not through my works that my sins are paid for, but it is by God’s grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…through faith in his blood, Romans 3:24-25.

So when that old guilt washes over me, I have to rehearse once more what I know to be true. True guilt can be taken care of, and God has done that for me.  The evil one wants to incapacitate me through shame, and I will not have it. Shame is destructive. Shame seeks to make us useless to God, BUT God loves us and longs to see us rejoicing, at peace and living so filled with love that it spills over. 

Paul did not let his guilt destroy his future or usefulness to God, and we must not either.