Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 175
TRANSCRIPT
Guilt can be a powerful and complex emotion, and while it can motivate someone to make amends or grow, it can also quietly harm relationships when it’s not handled well. For many of us, guilt is such a common emotion, in fact for some, they cannot remember a time when they did not experience guilt. In this week’s podcast we are going to look at how guilt can hinder and even destroy relationships.
I’m Lee Whitman with Restoring the Foundations and I welcome you into this Hope Healing and Freedom podcast. Our verse for today is Hebrews 10:22 which says, “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” Other translations say sprinkled clean from a guilty conscience.
Let’s begin talking about the difference between guilt and conviction. Guilt is the thought or feeling when a person has done something wrong, or they think they have done something wrong. It is a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense or wrong they committed. Again, it can also be the feeling when they think they have done something wrong. The reason we are looking at guilt in this podcast is because guilt is a favorite weapon of the enemy. He will use feelings of guilt against people to keep them in bondage.
Conviction on the other hand is a good kind of guilt. Conviction is a gift from God to lead people to repentance for sinful behavior. 2 Corinthians 7:9-10 says, “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.” We could substitute the word guilt for grief in this passage. Godly guilt leads to repentance, which is a really good thing.
In this podcast we are going to look at some of the ways unhealthy guilt can affect relationships. I am taking some of the information in this podcast from a search I did on Google.
One of the first effects of walking in guilt is to avoid or withdraw from the person you feel you have hurt. We pull away from people when we feel guilty. This avoidance and withdrawal create emotional distance with someone who we have previously been close to, causing that person to feel emotionally distant and maybe even confusion at the distance they are feeling.
Another common reaction when feeling guilt is to overcompensate, or people-pleasing, trying too hard to make up for the guilt. Guilt can drive people to over-apologize, over-give, or suppress their own needs to “make up” for a mistake. This creates an imbalance—one person ends up walking on eggshells, and the other might feel smothered or uncomfortable. The guilt can alter the normal give and take of a relationship, causing it to feel very unnatural and unhealthy. Our friend Becky operates with a lot of guilt. She is constantly trying to make up for the guilt she feels. Most of the guilt comes from the way she was raised by her parents. It can be very uncomfortable at times to be around her because she consistently tries to do things for others to make up for her feelings of guilt, even when she has done nothing wrong.
Another thing that guilt can do is suppress communication. Guilt often leads to avoidance of difficult conversations. honestly may fear saying the wrong thing or reigniting pain, so they stop being honest—weakening trust and intimacy. We did ministry recently with a couple and after receiving healing and freedom during the ministry the husband was able to admit to his wife that he does not talk about certain subjects because of the guilt he feels. He fears that he is going to say the wrong thing causing even more conflict. So, in his mind it is better to not say anything at all then to speak and risk saying the wrong thing. His not communicating has caused a severe distance in their relationship.
This leads to the next thing that guilt can cause, and that is repeated conflict cycles. RTF has a wonderful teaching on the Control Rebellion Rejection stronghold cycle. Let me briefly explain this cycle and see if you recognize it. The cycle begins when two people are having an interaction, and one person does something to control the second person. Their method of control might be arguing, manipulation, scheming, reasoning, or even anger. The reason that the person does something to control the second person is usually to protect themselves from being out of control or experiencing pain. The pain could be the guilt we are describing in this podcast. So, when the second person experiences the first person’s control, they will normally respond out of protecting themselves from pain with either rebellion or rejection, or both at the same time. Rebellion is often seen as resistance, “I am not doing what you want me to do”. Or being uncooperative, “I might do what you want, but I am going to do it my way and, on my schedule”. Or they might respond through rejection. Rejection can look like playing the victim, “I am always the bad guy”. Or by getting hurt and withdrawing. As soon as the second person goes into rebellion or rejection, they become the controller because they are keeping the first person from getting what they wanted to make them feel safe. Now the people switch places, and the second person becomes the controller, and the first person responds to the control through rebellion and rejection. This cycle goes round and round as both people are trying to protect themselves from pain. The pain they are avoiding can very easily be the guilt we are talking about. Unresolved guilt can keep old issues alive. For example, a person might keep bringing up the same mistake, seeking reassurance or punishment, which prevents the relationship from moving forward.
Self-punishment is another common way that guilt manifests. Some people punish themselves for feeling guilty—pushing loved ones away because they don’t feel “worthy” of forgiveness or happiness. Guilt can cause people to sabotage relationships to prove they are bad. This can make the other person in the relationship feel helpless or rejected. Common behaviors for self-sabotaging relationships are things like withholding thoughts and not communicating well. The person who feels guilty believes they don’t deserve to be heard, so they don’t share their thoughts, causing the other people to pull away. Another common form of self-sabotage is best called mind-reading. It is often done by getting upset that someone did not know what you expected in a situation, even though you never told them your expectations. It can also be that the guilty person believes they know the negative thoughts other people are thinking about them.
Another common guilt behavior is blame shifting or defensiveness. Blame shifting is a very common tactic seen in close relationships, like with a spouse or roommate. What usually happens is that a person raises a concern and the blame shifter immediately turns the focus to the partner’s flaws or past wrongdoings. The blame-shifter will use statements like, “I wouldn’t have gotten so mad if you wouldn’t have said what you said.” Or “I wouldn’t be so selfish if you wouldn’t have…”. I talked about Ned in a previous podcast. He is filled with guilt for not being a very good husband over the years. When his wife brings up something she would like Ned to work on, he goes into blame-shifting by calling out her behaviors he believes are wrong. What blame-shifting does is lead into my next point, and that is not taking responsibility for your actions. A person who does not deal with the guilt and just continues to use it is actually using the guilt to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. It is the inability for the guilty person to take ownership of their thoughts and actions and how those thoughts and actions affect the other people in their lives.
Living in guilt can lead to stunted growth and intimacy. It is nearly impossible to be intimate with someone who manifests guilt. The guilt becomes a barrier that keeps them from being open and honest with those in their life.
So, what is the solution to guilt? You guessed it, RTF ministry. RTF deals with the four problem areas that hold this stronghold of guilt in place. The first thing that must be dealt with is the generational curse of guilt. One guy we ministered to had a very religious grandmother who would often say, “God is not going to forgive you for that sin.” You talk about inheriting the curse of guilt. This guy suffered from guilt for most of his life. But by applying the shed blood of Jesus to this generational curse, the curse of guilt was broken off his life. Leviticus 26:40-42 says “But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, with their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, and that they also have walked contrary to Me, if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they accept their guilt— then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham I will remember; I will remember the land.
The second reason RTF ministry is so effective in eliminating guilt from our lives is by dealing with the lies we believe. All of our sin patterns are being held in place by something we believe. Whenever we come to a point of choice in our lives, we have to choose whether we are going to agree with the father of lies, the devil, or if we are going to agree with God. Romans 12:2 says from The Passion Translation, “Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in His eyes.” Guilt is going to keep whispering lies to you. Lies like, “When something is wrong, it is your fault.” or “You have messed up so badly you can never recover from your mistakes.” Those might feel true to the person struggling with guilt, but they are absolutely untrue according to Father God. When we walk people through this part of the ministry to break off the lie, then we ask Father God for His truth, it is amazing how life changes when they hear from Father God firsthand. It is nice for me to tell you what I hear God saying for you, but it is life-changing when you hear Him say it directly to you.
The third reason that RTF is life-changing is when we invite Jesus to come and heal your broken heart. In Luke 4:18, Jesus says, “I came to heal the broken-hearted.” Simon was the guy who had the very religious grandmother who told him that God was not going to forgive him for that sin. So, we had him go to that memory of when his grandmother said that to him and begin to tell Jesus how he felt in the memory. He and some of the older teens in the neighborhood were looking at a pornographic magazine when they were caught by his grandmother. Simon began to tell Jesus how guilty he felt for looking at the magazine. Jesus not only took the guilt that Simon felt and threw the guilt over a cliff, but he took the magazine and told Simon that magazines like that were not for Him. Jesus had something much better for him in the future. Instantly, the guilt was gone, and Simon’s desire to look at magazines like that was gone as well. Jesus is so good at healing our broken hearts.
The fourth area that RTF deals with that makes it so effective is by getting rid of the demonic influence in our lives. The generational curses give the demons a legal right to influence us. When we apply the blood of Jesus to the generational curses, the demons lose their legal right. Then, when we come out of agreement with the lies we believe, the demons lose another legal right they have to influence us. Then, when we get our hearts healed from the wounds caused by this life, we take another legal right away from the demons. Once those rights are taken away, it becomes very easy to make the demonic influence leave. And if we keep the doors shut through those first three ministry areas of the generational curses, the lies we believe, and the wounds of our hearts, then the demons cannot return.
One last thought on guilt. The conviction that God give goes away when we repent of the sin. The guilt of the enemy does not go away no matter what we do. It becomes part of our identity.
PRAYER
Father God, worldly guilt is not from You. Your kind of guilt is used to convict us of sin so that we are led to repent. Would you help us recognize the difference between conviction and guilt?