Anxiety

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Welcome to Thrive. It's good to see you this morning, or well, I guess it's good to be seen. I can't see you, but we do know you're there. Now we are in our third week of spring cleaning, and today we're going to be looking at the debris that's in our lives that we can clear out to make room for Jesus. Let's begin with prayer. Lord God, this day, it's another beautiful day here in Southwest Florida today, where we're experiencing the beauty of your creation and of nature. We do pray, though, Lord, in our area and in our time, that you would do the cleaning work that you want to do, and using even this pandemic in ways to bring about a renewal and refinement of your church and your people, and to move more and more people to understand their need for you, their love that they need from you, the forgiveness of sins, the life that they can have in your name, dear Jesus. We pray for all the frontline workers, whether they are in essential duties and have not gotten much attention before or not, for those who are from the grocery stores into the sanitation workers, the nurses, the doctors, the physicians, the first responders, Lord God, you know them all. We lift up to you as well, Lord, all the small businesses that are hurting and trying to figure out the way forward, all those who are unemployed in our midst right now and how they're struggling with their finances. Lord God, we lift up our governmental leaders, both here locally, throughout our state and our nation, Lord, that you give them wisdom and insight and a spirit of humility and of seeking you and your will rather than their own ways. Lord God, we pray that you would be working through this time, that your kingdom grows and is extended, and in our lives, Lord God, that you would be doing your work the way that you want in your own ways. All this we lift up to you in Jesus' name today, amen. So like I said, we're in our third week of this series, Spring Cleaning, Making Room for Jesus, and today we're going to be talking about how to clean out the gunk of chronic guilt, okay? The fact that you just sometimes feel guilty all the time for no apparent reason, okay? Now you might go like, wait a minute, aren't we supposed to feel guilty? Well, yes and no, and we'll get through that, but let's look right now at our Bible passage which is coming from Hebrews chapter 10. And it reads, and every priest stands daily at a service offering repeatedly the same sacrifice which can never take away sins, but when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sin, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet, for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us after saying, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds, and he adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. Chronic guilt, because I think many people have this nagging sense that something is wrong, they're not quite sure what, but they're just always guilty. Franz Kafka wrote a short story called The Trial years ago, and in it a man named Joseph on his 30th birthday is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. But he is not put in jail, he is released on bail, free, and told to await further instructions from the Committee of Affairs, whatever that means, and throughout the next year, Joseph just has this lingering cloud of guilt hanging over him, ambiguous chronic guilt. He's not quite sure what it is or what it's about. You've ever felt that way? Now I'm not advocating in this sermon that you never feel guilty about anything, no. Guilt can be a good thing. When I've done something that's harmful to myself, to others, destructive or defiant toward God, now that's called a sin of commission, because I've committed something or thought something, did something. Guilt can be good. And it can also be good when I haven't done what I should have done for someone. That's called a sin of omission, I've omitted doing it, and guilt can come in. And the sin of omission comes in, but guilt brings me back, in either of those circumstances, to my moral center and standing, and it points me to a solution outside of myself, not from within myself. And if I never felt any guilt, well that itself would be a form of pathology, and a truly hard heart. John wrote in his first letter, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness...