2 Corinthians 7:8-11 - The Message
"I know I distressed you greatly with my letter. Although I felt awful at the time, I don't feel at all bad now that I see how it turned out. The letter upset you, but only for a while. Now I'm glad—not that you were upset, but that you were jarred into turning things around. You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets. And now, isn't it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You're more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible. Looked at from any angle, you've come out of this with purity of heart."
When we find ourselves in sin, it seems common that our initial reaction when coming out of said sin, is guilt. We sense guilt over what happened, what we let happen, and in turn something in us wants to change... For so long I felt like this guilt was okay. Now, I was not a believer of wallowing in it or letting it take over us, but to some degree, I felt like this guilt was okay, because it showed the Holy Spirit's work in a person's life. If there was no guilt or regret present at all about a wrong-doing, then we should be concerned!
However, I'm beginning to think differently. Perhaps, a better word for guilt is 'conviction.' Perhaps I should be grateful for the Holy Spirit's conviction in a believer's lives, but not the guilt. Conviction "jarr(s us) into turning things around." Conviction "gets us back in the way of salvation." Guilt will simply overpower us, if we let it. Guilt will lead us to a "deathbed of regrets." I will never forget a professor who told us that our feeling guilt admits in us a belief that we have to "earn" His grace.
And to take things a step further, we need to stop wrestling with the guilt. Andrew Murray, in his book "Experiencing the Holy Spirit" deals with the effect of the self-life on the Holy Spirit's work. Chapter 5 of this book, "How the Blessing is Hindered" deals with our tendency to try to solve our own problems of selfishness, to bulk up our own desire for discipline... If we would simply stop wrestling with the guilt, stop trying to solve our own problems or willing ourselves towards change, and instead spent that time laying down our lives before the One and Only, perhaps then, and only then, we would begin to see the work and conviction of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
May we be grateful for the conviction in our lives. May we move past the guilt and the desire to problem-solve. May we get in the habit of denying ourselves, even in those things that are seemingly unimportant, and ask, whole-heartedly and expectantly, for Him to do a work in our lives. May we be, as the Scripture says, " more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible."
