Welcome!

Welcome to my blog where you'll find a variety of INpowering truths, Tiney Thoughts and Twittistry,org.
If you are looking for a niched blog,
this isn't it, but the common thread for all of my post is JESUS.

Jump right in to be a blessed and to be a blessing by sharing your thoughts/comments. Feel free to CLICK follow AND subscribe to this blog. Links to our website and online resources are on the right, go ahead and check them out. Blessings!

Monday, July 11, 2011

Is it Worldly Sorrow ?

I was up recently at 3am counseling a brother and his wife, he’s an addict and she’s had enough! He talked and I listened. He’s been though many programs and has been an addict for many years. His life cycle has been up, down and up, down and you guessed it…up, down.

Most would look at him and dismiss him and say ” he’s never going to change and he’s never going to be anything in life.” Contrary to what people believe he’s already something in life…we just have to take the time and have the spiritual insight to see him through the eyes of Christ and not our own eyes. That can be hard to do when we often view people and situations through our emotions and feelings, instead of seeing them as Jesus Christ sees them. l’ve grown stronger in this area over the years....

I’ve known this addict for forty-six (46) years, I knew him before he began doing drugs and I knew him when a man set his fifteen month old baby on fire. I knew him when he got shot six times at point blank range and one of the impacts to his leg was so powerful it literally twisted the leg around backwards(foot turned toward his back) and they said he’d never walk again—he’s walking. I knew him when his mother passed and he blamed himself for her death because he felt his addiction brought too much stress on her. I was there when he went to prison, I visited him there. He’s a good friend and a hard worker secularly and in the Kingdom. Maybe you know someone like him…every family seems to have one. Maybe it's not street drugs that's a problem in your family....maybe it's food addictions, sex addictions,lying addictions, being messy addictions, or an addiction to drama and division or maybe it's legalized drugs like alcohol or prescription medication. I know that comes as a shock to some of you but YES prescription medicine is a drug too and many in the church and out of the church are addicted to them. I’ll close that with a simple SELAH.

Fast forward. My time with the brother revealed a Strongman named Guilt and Shame. Guilt and Shame have been playing all of the negatives of this man’s life over and over in his head and his spirit like a audio recording that just won’t stop. Some of you that are reading this have a recording in your life that just won’t stop…voices in your head that remind you of your ‘perceived’ failures, tell you that you aren’t who God says you are, cause you to operate in a FALSE sense of responsibility and cause you to blame yourself for things that ONLY God can do. Guilt and Shame are able to do what they do for one reason—Unforgiveness.

We have to learn how to forgive ourselves just as well as we have to learn how to forgive others and the enemy uses this to his great advantage. This isn't anything new, you've heard it time and time again but hearing it and doing it are vastly different things!

Here’s a common lie the enemy tells….”you’re too bad and you’ve done too many bad things for God to forgive you!” You haven’t done anything so horrible that God can’t forgive it. In most cases if you’ve truly repented and notice I said TRULY then God has already extended his love, grace and mercy but you have built yourself a prison and Guilt and Shame are your cement and bricks. Tear it down! 

What allows the Strongman to torment us with Guilt and Shame? After all, godly sorrow works repentance right? We quote that a lot in the church but we negate the rest of the story in 2 Corinthians 7:10.

For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.

The sorrow of the world works death...humnnn. To be bound to anything that causes us to self destruct is death. And yes, I did say anything because there are other things that some have Guilt and Shame over –even things like gluttony which has an addictive nature of its own. This will throw you for a loop, some are addicted to church. No, I'm not talking about Christ but wood and brick, they think being there every time the doors are open is 'saving' them and they neglect family and other responsibilities and then have Guilt and Shame. Uh-O.  

Do you think the sorrow of the world is –“I’m not sorry I did it, I’m sorry I got caught?” OR I’m sorry you saw me do it. OR does it run deeper than that and maybe the sorrow of the world is the mere fact that God’s grace and mercy has been extended but we’ve rejected it (sometimes unknowlingly) therefore the things we’ve done and even confessed are not removed as far from us as the east is from the west?

You can confess your sins and faults and repent and turn from them, but you have to actually receive the love, grace and mercy of Jesus Christ to be free of the Strongman that holds the gate open for your torment. Forgive you. Yes, you did it! Yes, it was wrong and bad! Yes, if you could turn back time you’d do things differently! Yes, Christ has forgiven you if you have godly sorrow! Yes, you can turn that recorder off by receiving that Jesus is done with it and you don’t have to beat yourself up over it and you don’t have to let people remind you of it—agree with your adversary quickly!
Yes I did it! Yes, Jesus forgave me and Yes I forgive me!

And guess what, we all have an area where some godly sorrow is in order….if we say we don’t we lie to ourselves and build for ourselves a prison of self-deceit. This is another Tiney thought.....
blog comments powered by Disqus