Overcoming guilt day seven

Over the years in talking with people, I have found that many people have regrets in the area of their children. This often leads to feelings of great guilt and grief. Sometimes we can look back and see areas that we didn't do the best job of parenting, and that adds to our feelings of guilt. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could live a life of no guilt and no regrets? Guilt has to do with torment and God never torments us in this life, the Bible says that Jesus came to give us life. Each of us can have a more abundant life free from the torment of guilt. We cannot go back in time and erase mistakes that we have made. However, we can learn to be at peace with our life choices, even if those choices were bad.

The Bible says, God will not be mocked, whatever a man sows that shall he also reap. This is often used as a negative verse indicating that we will get bad results if we do bad things. This is only a negative verse if our actions have been negative. I like to see this as a positive verse. Sometimes when a person has done good things they are wrongfully given a bad deal by people or by a company or court. This says that God will not be mocked. When we reward someone evil even though they deserve something good we are breaking God's law. No one is going to mock God by giving good things to bad people and despising good people. Whatever we sow, God will see to it that we will reap according to our actions. It is like planting a seed. When you plant a seed you don't see fruit over night. It takes time, and sometimes it takes a little nurturing before you get fruit. Some seeds product the fruit within weeks after the seed is planted, while other seeds may require 2 or 3 seasons of trying to produce fruit before it actually produces useful fruit. Any farmer will tell you that it takes time to produce a harvest.

The Bible talks about a sower that went out to sow his seed. The seed is God's word and the field is the heart of the hearer. Our hearts are like plantations, and the words that we hear are the seeds. The Bible says that there are also different kinds of hearts in mankind. There is the trodden down heart (hard and stubborn), the stony heart (shallow and immature), the thorny heart (heavy weighted by the cares of life), and the good heart ( soft and tender that is able to receive the seed (the word) of God. When we feel like we have failed with our children we sometimes will try to fix it later on in life when they are adults. Sometimes our methods only make matters worse. We will talk more about all four kind of hearts that Jesus identified, but for now we will talk about the hard hearted person.

The first kind of heart is the trodden down heart. Jesus said it would be the kind of ground that you would find on the path, the place where men walk. Since it is hardened by the footsteps the seed just lays on top of the ground and the birds eat the seed, so it doesn't produce a harvest. When we have been done unfairly in life we become hard and stubborn, calloused. If your loved one has been done unjustly because they didn't get the proper attention when they were growing up they may be stubborn and unyielding, somewhat hard hearted, now that they are grown. Disappointments have a way of making us harden our hearts. We harden our hearts to help us deal with the pain. If someone with a hard heart is going to change their ways the heart will have to be softened first. What does a farmer do when the ground is hard? A blunt hit against the ground will not soften the ground but harden it further. It is useless to knock heads with a hard hearted person. This action will only make their heart harden further. A farmer will use a tiller to break up the ground. The only way to heal a hard heart is to break it. No human being has the right to break another's heart. Only God is qualified to break the cold stony heart. He is the only one that can do it without crushing it to pieces. The more that we nag, yell and hound the hard hearted person the harder we make the ground of their heart. It would be the same as stomping on a farmer's field thinking that our footsteps would somehow soften the ground. Stomping on ground does not soften it, but hardens it further. The only way to help a hard hearted person is by asking God to break up that hard heart. Getting your heart broken is not pleasant, but, we all know that in times of crisis people are more likely to turn to God for help. Crisis breaks that hard heart and gives an opportunity for the seed which is God's word to fall into the broken cracks. Once the seed of the Word of God is planted in the heart and it grows to produce fruit the results will be good fruit, the kind we all like to have in our lives.

The hard hearted person has chosen to harden their hearts because they have suffered so many disappointments from people they wanted to be able to trust and respect. A hard hearted person will seldom feel any kind of personal guilt. They are focused on the terrible things that others have done to them and have put a hard coating over their heart for fear of becoming a victim. Most hard hearted people will seldom cry and will get angry if things of the past are brought up. They have chosen to block out their own pain and emotions and therefore do not have the ability to feel the pain and emotions of others. These people will often see emotions and sentimentalism as weaknesses and sometimes despises those who are overly emotional on a personal level. Compassion, mercy, love, long-suffering, these are the qualities of one with a good heart that is ready to receive God's seed. The hard hearted person would display qualities that would be just the opposite in nature. The hard hearted person would see someone with the above qualities as weak and pathetic. The very root of the good hearted person is Love, because God is love. The very root of the hard hearted person is rebellion. Rebellion is like a spiritual force field that blocks out the seed (God's word) and keeps it from penetrating the heart so that it never produces a fruit of goodness in the hearer. Most of us can think of at least one person that we know that has put up a force field of rebellion around their heart blocking out all that is good.

What is it like to have rebellion as the driving force of your life? Rebellion will cause a person to refuse to listen to sound reasoning. Rebellion will demand that you do whatever it takes to get your own way, even if it defies all sound logic. Rebellion will cause a person to buck up and hurt the people that they love. Rebellion will demand that you live completely selfishly if that is what is takes to get what you want. Rebellion will make you think that you are in control, that you are completely in charge of everything around you. It may seem that way for a while because Rebellion will require you to get violent with those who do not see things your way and people will likely cave into what you want. What is the fruit of Rebellion then? Defying logic, hurting those we love, total selfishness and violence to those who get in the way of those dreams. Sounds like a person that will soon lose every Friend that they cannot intimidate into staying. Would anyone want to live with a person who acts like that? Would you like to be a person like that? What are the rewards? At the cost of hurting everyone around us, we get our own way. Doesn't sound like much of a pay off to me.

Ask God to break the hard heart, only He can do it safely. Some of the most rebellious and selfish people out there are suicidal as well. Rebellion does not make you happy. Wouldn't it seem logical that we would be happy if we could always get our way? No, it does not make us happy. That kind of logic leads to death. Once we get everything that we wanted and we are still empty and unhappy we begin to try to find Nirvana. Peace is not out there in front of you, something that you can control or force into your life. Peace is behind you. Those that you have pushed out of your life, those who love and care for you. When you make peace with them, on THEIR terms you will have shed your cloak of rebellion that is driving your life.

When I gave my heart to Jesus, God pulled several layers of rebellion off of my life. The first thing I wanted to do is hug my mom and tell her that I was sorry. It was like God opened me up to love once again. The Bible says that the devil will blind us to the fact that we are lost. I didn't realize how sorry I was until God removed the veil. I realized the people that loved me the most were the very people I was pushing against. If you have a child that is hard hearted try not to lock horns with them. Don't push them away further. Your feelings of guilt and remorse can provide you energy if you need it. It is easy to understand this concept. When we fret we use energy. Just fret for a little while and see how tired it makes you. We know that we have to have some fuel to burn if energy is released like we do when we fret. Guilt and remorse is fueling the fretting that you are doing. Try taking that same guilt and remorse and fueling your prayer lamp instead. If you are going to burn energy, why not put it to good use.