sorrow and guilt

The council of friends met again yesterday morning, bright and early. Over coffee and tea, we discussed our findings of the past week.

First we reviewed Psalm 51, which we had been meditating on.

One friend commented that she had kept her Bible open in her quilting room and read the psalm whenever it caught her eye.  She asked about contrition, which I tried to explain as sincere sorrow over wrong-doing.  In the context, David recorded: a broken and contrite heart [God] will not despise.

Interestingly, I had been also contemplating 2 Corinthians 10:8-10:

For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while.  As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

I read the comment that Lisa made on the post about different sources of guilt (after I gave a bit of her back story for the past couple years to establish her credibility):

I think we should not respond to [sources of guilt] all the same way as every source isn't necessarily truth however, I think the Church at large have removed true guilt as the baby with the bath water type situation - we need to know we are sinners and feel the wrong from right when we actually are guilty so we can be broken before God about it and repent! yet learning we are then forgiven so guilt has been washed from us and we shouldn't carry it away with us...

I think because we don't often know how to deal with our true guilt - we end up with a guilt complex which is then put on situations it shouldn't be - feeling guilty when a situation isn't actually our fault, blaming ourselves cos we feel we have to, or accepting Satans lies in our ear

it's a tough one isn't it xx 

I also shared the quote from the Going Beyond facebook page which is the body of the previous blog post.

 Another friend shared how in her meditation of Psalm 51, God had been showing her that she only had control over herself in her circumstances, and not  over the circumstances or the other people involved.

May God have mercy on us all, and free us to live in joy and freedom.