Living to Win Over Guilt
Tom Shrader launches a new series addressing common human struggles like guilt, anxiety, fear, and stress. He begins with guilt, defining it as failing to meet expectations of authority figures, particularly God. Shrader examines four responses to guilt - denial, regret, remorse, and repentance - using biblical examples like the rich young ruler and Judas. He teaches that true freedom from guilt comes only through acknowledging sin, experiencing godly sorrow, and finding forgiveness in Christ.
“You are more wicked than you ever imagined and more loved than you ever dreamed.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Living to Win (2014)
Recorded: 2014
Duration: 37 min
Themes: guilt, forgiveness, repentance, anxiety, fear, stress, shame, freedom, struggling with guilt, overwhelmed by stress, feeling condemned, seeking forgiveness, dealing with anxiety, new believer, experiencing shame, needing healing
Scripture: Mark 10:17-22, Proverbs 28:13, Matthew 27:3-5, Luke 5:32, James 2:10, 2 Corinthians 7:10, Acts 2:37
Theological Themes: sin, godly sorrow, conviction, redemption, salvation, biblical counseling, sanctification, grace
Full Transcript
New series today. You have outlines in front of you. The series is titled Living to Win, subtitle, Identifying and Unraveling the Entanglements of Life. Now that list could be long. We've got it down to eight weeks. So let me give you the topics. Living to Win over weakness, anxiety, fear, worthlessness, loneliness. I'm getting depressed just reading the list. Stress and uncertainty.
Somewhere one of those might catch you. My sense is that kind of describes really the human condition. As I said, what we'll do is identify and define them and try to unravel them. There's no good telling you you have stress if we don't give you something to do with it. So we'll do that.
I don't know that that sequence matters much: weakness, anxiety, fear, loneliness, worthlessness, stress, uncertainty. I do think what today is - it's important that we start with this. If you don't resolve this in the ultimate sense, the rest of these are just band-aids. The rest of it is just Oprah and Dr. Phil. Frankly, I don't like Dr. Phil, but I can watch Oprah a lot.
Starting with the Root Issue
I can watch that and you can get some helpful advice. I heard today going in to get my coffee an ad for the world's most positive man. I'm going to have to go home and Google that and see this. My suspicion is my picture is not on the website, but I don't know - maybe I won an award I'm not aware of.
However positive and upbeat you are, you still have to deal with all of these, and especially today's topic, which is guilt. It's that thing that kind of is around and hounds you all over. You have the definition of that Webster uses on your outline: the fact of having committed a breach of conduct or the feeling of responsibility either real or imagined.
There was a gentleman Harold McDaniel who enlisted in the Navy. He's even more clever than I am. He wanted to get to San Diego, so he thought enlisting in the Navy would probably get him to Coronado. It made me think maybe I need to rethink that and maybe I ought to do that. They didn't station him in San Diego, so he went AWOL.
Here's what he said when he finally turned himself in. He said, "I've been thinking about surrendering for a long time and I finally couldn't stand it anymore. I started seeing cops at night all the time. Every time I saw a patrol car I thought they were after me. I just wanted it to be over." That's guilt - that thing that's around, nagging at me, pulling at me at different levels of intensity through the course of the day or the night.
Understanding Guilt and Moral Codes
As Webster says, there's a fact of having committed a breach of conduct, and implied in that is that there is a code of conduct. It was interesting in our discussion with Fred Duval the other night. He was very nice and very polite and very handsome - he's a very handsome guy. We talked about budget and education, and we had fun. I did either-or questions: beach or mountain, book or movie, Mexican food or Italian food, Dairy Queen or Coldstone. I went through it with him.
He was more comfortable with education, but we talked about education and he was very confident. Forget how you feel about him - he was very confident. He had control of the facts. Then we talked at the end about social issues, and we talked about issues that would be important to us in a value sense about abortion and then about same-sex marriage.
When we got to that, it was the first time in the night that I sensed - either an answer, well number one, I think he knew he was in an environment where his answer was different than ours. He acknowledged that. But in trying to unpack same-sex marriage, my question to him was not what's your stance, but how'd you get there?
I don't know that I've ever seen anything move in the culture faster than this topic. This thing went from no one would touch it in 2012 to where we are now where 60% of the people in the country believe this is okay. So my question is not where are you, but how did you get there?
The Foundation of Our Moral Code
His answer was it's love and experience. Basically, he had an uncle who was a Presbyterian minister who was gay, married, had kids but was gay, and an aunt who was gay, and people who he loved and cared for who were gay. They deeply loved one another. So I don't want to argue with that. I'm just saying, is that where you get your code of behavior? So my values are driven by feeling and love and experience? Is there something more solid than that?
Again, my point here is not to argue with him, but to see that contrast. We could use anybody as an illustration, but to see that contrast. When we talk about a code of conduct for us, we're talking about going to this book. From it we're going to get concrete yeses or nos, or we're going to get principles that we can then apply to any sort of circumstances.
That's why in something like marriage, our opinion really isn't evolving, because God created it: male and female, heterosexual, permanent, monogamous. Now we screw that up - I got that - but that's God's design. You see what I'm saying? Just in terms of thinking things through, first of all, our opinions don't matter much. You should not be terribly concerned what I think about stuff, but you should be concerned about what I think in the context of what the scripture says.
Four Categories of Guilt
So there's this fact of this breach of conduct or this feeling, and it may be real or maybe imagined. I wrote four categories here - it's not in your outline, but there are people who are guilty and they're absolutely guilty. They did it, they feel it, and you've been there. You've done that. You knew it was wrong, you did it, and you feel guilty, and you are guilty.
Then there's those who are in fact guilty but they feel innocent. I have these discussions all the time and my life is filled with...
Understanding Guilt in Different Generations
With the next generation, it's interesting to have these conversations, and they'll say, "Didn't you do this kind of stuff too?" My answer is yes, but we hid it. We were ashamed of it. I watch a lot of TV, and I acknowledge this. I watch House Hunters, and here's Bonnie and Bob looking for their starter home. They've been together for five years and they're starting a family. She's going to have a baby, and they want to get settled and have the house when they get married in a couple of years.
I'm not belittling that at all, and I'm not saying my generation didn't do that, but we didn't go on cable TV around the world and announce it. We were embarrassed. This is my friend, and when I notice you have the same address, you'd say, "Yeah, well, it's a mailing address." You're guilty, but you don't feel it.
Four Categories of Guilt
There's a second category: you're innocent in fact but you feel guilty. There was a comment in preparation for this, and I've met with a bunch of people. I met with a guy who is a legislator and has governed, which is very different than running. We were talking about Child Protective Services and the issues there, and how difficult that is. Here's what he said - he's not an evangelical Christian, so this isn't me up on a soapbox - he said government is simply not equipped to deal with the breakdown of the family. The breakdown of the family is destroying the country you live in. It has all these ramifications.
Poverty prevents in many cases the ability to hide this, but you have the same travesty going on in Paradise Valley. You just have the cash to cover it up. You have the same thing going on there, and I will deal with guys who are 40 years old whose parents have been divorced for 25 years, and they're still feeling the guilt of "What did I do to cause this?" They're innocent in fact, but they feel guilty.
And then the last one, and this is our goal, and I think it's on your outline, is to in fact be innocent and feel innocent.
The Source of Guilt
Guilt is the result of failing to meet the expectations of the authority figures in your life. I let my coach down. I let my teacher down. I let my dad down. I'm big on the idea of expectations - way beyond the scope of the lesson. Most of life, hurt and pain are misplaced or undefined expectations.
I'm talking to somebody the other day, and their son got married six months ago. I said, "How's it going?" He said, "Not so good." Well, six months into it, you should still be flying. I've been married 29 months, and you're still just keeping things going really well. You shouldn't be screwed up at six months. I said, "What happened?" He goes, "Well, you know, he just didn't think it was going to be..." - misplaced expectation.
So now I come to the authority figures in my life, and they have an expectation. God has a standard. Now we're dealing with this guilt - guilt from God. We're talking about appropriate guilt, appropriate feeling, as we discover what in fact God has for us. We want to resolve the fact of our guilt and discover, resolve the feeling of our guilt.
The Central Issue: Forgiveness
Here's what we're going to talk about today. This is giant, and it's universal indeed, and that is forgiveness. Let's follow your outline - two big areas. How do we respond to guilt, and how do we receive forgiveness?
Four Ways We Respond to Guilt
We respond to guilt in one of four ways. There may be more, but these are the four we use. Number one: it didn't happen. I didn't do it. It's kind of the Pharisees - I'm not guilty. It's the classic. I had it in my life. Anybody that's a parent or a grandparent has seen it, where I walk into Sarah's room. You know the story, right? There's blue crayon on the wall, there's blue crayon on the sheets, there's blue crayon on the dresser, there's blue crayon in her teeth, and there's a blue crayon in her hand. I said to her, "Did you do this?" And she said, "What? No."
I'm going, "Buddy, come on. Johnny Cochran couldn't get you out of this. You're in real trouble. You're guilty, man." Call Goldberg and Osborne, bring them all in here. You're guilty, can't get you out. We'll take the facts if you want them, but I'm the judge, this is overwhelming. I can't believe somebody set you up. Your sister didn't come in and color the room and color your teeth and put this thing in your hand.
The First Response: Repression
So what are the things I can do? I'm guilty of these things and I just repress it. I pretend I didn't do it. Proverbs 28:13 - "He who conceals his sin does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy."
The Second Response: Regret
Here's the second one: to have regrets. I feel bad that it happened. Turn with me to Mark 10. This is a story that's recorded by all the gospel writers, but I chose Mark 10 because Mark adds in his writing something that the other gospel writers don't.
Mark 10:17 - the rich young ruler comes to Him: "Good teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus answers, verse 19, "Don't you know the commandments? Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother." He said to Him, "Teacher, I've kept all these things all my life."
The Problem with the Rich Young Ruler
So he comes and says, "What do I have to do" - in our context, let's say, get into heaven, experience eternal life. Jesus gives him the commandments. His response was, "That's great, because I've kept all those." Now, this is a tense moment, because we know the law wasn't given for us to keep, to earn a way to heaven, but as a tutor, to point out to us how sinful we are. That's why in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus expands it. "You heard me say, 'Don't commit adultery,' and they're going, 'I've never slept with somebody else,' but if you've ever looked and lusted in your heart, that's what..."
tripped up Jimmy Carter, remember? If you ever looked or lusted in your heart, you've committed adultery. And at that point, almost anybody that's honest goes, "No, that's a little more than I hoped for." Don't commit murder - well, I've never killed anybody. But if you call your brother "Raka," knucklehead, if you commit assassination with your mouth, if you do that, then... hmm. So he said, "Okay, I've done all that."
Jesus' Loving Confrontation
Verse 21, and again, it's going to be message creep. Looking at him - and this is what Mark adds, the others don't - Jesus felt a love for him. See, what's the loving thing to do? Is the loving thing to do to take a sharp object and shove it in somebody's chest and slice them open? Well, not if you're at Tatum and Shea, but if you're at Shea North, the guy took the scalpel and laid me open and did the heart procedure. The loving thing to do at that point was in fact that insertion, even though it was painful.
I mean, I have another doctor that I go to who was describing a procedure he was going to do. And I could put you gentlemen in a fetal position in about two minutes here if I wanted to. When it was all done, he said to me, "It's not as bad as it sounds." Well, now here's somebody that Jesus loves deeply and the kid's hanging out there and he's all screwed up. What do you do? Jesus doesn't back off the gas - He intensifies it.
"One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow Me." Jesus said to him, "Okay, you want to play the follow-the-rule game? Let me give it to you. Take everything you have, all your possessions, and give them to the poor."
Understanding Jesus' Command
Now here's what Jesus is not doing. He's not teaching salvation by philanthropy. He's not teaching that stuff sends you to hell. So I've got stuff, I give it to Ron, now I'm all right, but Clarkie's in trouble. So he passes it to Rebecca. So it goes around the room, just like the old time bomb you had when you were kids. You wind it, and if it goes off while you got the stuff, you go to hell. That's not what He's teaching.
What He's doing is exposing his heart. He's saying, "Listen, you say you keep all the commandments, but you didn't get by the first one. Love Me, let Me be your only Lord. Don't have any idols - your stuff's in the way."
The Challenge of Tough Love
I had a lady who was talking to me about a friend of hers. And she said, "We go way back. I mean, we go way back. We go back to high school. We've been buds since high school and college. Our kids go to swim team together." She said, "I love her so much, but she's not a Christian." And I said, "Well, I understand that's difficult." And she said, "But I just can't share my faith with her." I said, "Oh, that's tough. Why?" And she said, "I'm afraid I'll lose the relationship."
Can some of you connect on that? Thanksgiving's coming up, and you're going to be reinserted into your nutty, dysfunctional family, and add a little booze to it - there's the Thanksgiving prescription. And you're going, "Okay, faith is going to come up. But I don't want to go in there and blow the family apart."
I said to her, "I just want to make sure I understand this. So you love this gal so much, and you're so fearful of not having her in your circle of friends, that you are risking eternity because you love her so much." I said, "My point here is not to shame you or make you feel bad. I wrestle with this stuff myself. But do you see it? If you really love somebody, you tell them the tough stuff."
If you're a doctor - I had my annual physical the other day. Everything's fine, better than it was last year. I said, "Well, the bar wasn't very high last year, but that's okay. I guess that's good news, going to go with that." But if that doctor sees something on a scope - he was doing scopes and scans - if he sees something on that scope, the loving thing is not to say, "Well, I'm going to hide it. I don't want to ruin Tom's day." The loving thing is to tell me and try to fix it. Jesus loves this man, but his problem is He feels bad, He gets it, but look what happens.
The Third Response: Remorse
Jesus tells him that, but at these words, verse 22, he was saddened and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much. He had a lot of stuff. He said, "This is why I feel bad. I feel terrible. I'm sorry it happened. I wish I could change things, but I can't." The third response is remorse.
There's a story in Matthew 27 that if it didn't have this guy's name attached to it, I think it would break your heart. There's a guy who sins, and he sins big time. And he's so overwhelmed by his sin that he ultimately goes and returns any sort of gain he had from his sin and then goes out and hangs himself. The problem in the story is Matthew 27, verse 3, the second word: "When Judas..." Once you put Judas in the picture, it messes everything up because we have that stereotype.
I remember going out one night with Haley, but I did it with the girls all the time. We're going to this thing, and I said, "Listen, I'm going to introduce you. And if I say 'This is Bob, Bob, this is Haley,' if I don't say that, I don't know the guy's name. So what you need to do is say, 'Hi, I'm Haley,' anticipating that she's going to hear back 'I'm Bob.'" Now, if you meet Haley to this day - and I'm driving, you say, "Dad, I've heard this a million times, I know how to do it" - if you meet Haley to this day, it's the cutest thing in the world, she'll just go, "Hi, I'm Haley."
I have a million times said, "Hi, I'm Tom." I try to get it out right away - here's who I am, tell me who you are, let's go. I have a million times said, "Hi, I'm Tom." I've heard back, "Hi, I'm Sky," "I'm Blue," "I'm Meadow," "I'm River." I've never heard, "I'm Judas." Not one time ever. I've never had one guy say, "Good to meet you, I'm Judas." And this name is so burdened with sin and guilt and remorse that we never even...
a boy named Sue before I have a boy named Judas. When Judas, who had betrayed Jesus, saw Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the 30 pieces of silver coin. And he said, "I've sinned, I've betrayed." "What is it to us," they said, "this is your responsibility." Verse 5, so Judas threw the money in the temple and left, and then he went away and he hanged himself.
This is that guilt that knows that I'm wrong. I don't want to dismiss it. I don't want to say, "Gosh, I wish it wouldn't happen." I'm so overwhelmed by it. I'm sick by it. I need to do something about it. I need relief.
Tiger had all his deal four or five years ago. He did the press conference. And in the press conference, he said, "I am going to return to my faith, my Buddhist faith." Britt Hume did the comment on that on Sunday, got in trouble on Sunday, because he was in trouble, he did it again on Monday. But he said, "That isn't going to do him any good, because there's no forgiveness in that, there's only work." It's one of these moments you have on national TV that you go, "Wow, they're playing this out, this is real."
Because now what you're talking about, what Hume's talking about, is biblical Christianity, which says, "I need forgiveness, I know I'm guilty, that's where it all starts." There's no Christian life until I do the "blessed are the poor in spirit." Blessed am I who is spiritually bankrupt, who comes to the point where I know I'm guilty, and I'm beyond religion, and I'm so desperate, that now Jesus is the answer. That's repentance. It's the fourth opportunity. It's my fault. I did it. I'm guilty. I know I'm a sinner. I know there's nothing I can do about it. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by this sin.
The Call to Repentance
Luke 5, verse 32: "It's not the healthy who need a doctor, it's the sick. I've come to call not the righteous, but the sinners, to repentance."
There's a three-step process on your outline in terms of dealing with this idea of finding forgiveness. Number one is to be aware that you've sinned. Be aware that sin is a big deal. We have a tendency, humanly, to minimize that sin. Or to explain it away. Or to say it was no big deal.
Here's what James says in James 2:10: "A person who keeps every law of God, but makes one little slip, is just as guilty as a person who's broken every law there is." Fundamental, basic step 101: to break a law, in God's eyes, is to break the law.
The Broken Window Illustration
So my favorite illustration is let's say I'm playing golf up at Desert Highlands. So we know it's theoretical because I wouldn't go up there. Too hard, too difficult. And let's say, let's make it even more theoretical. Let's say I hit a snap hook. Never hit a hook in my life. I'm only going to hit it high right.
Well, let's say I hit this snap hook off into somebody's house. Not even going to really look for it. But as I get up there, there's a guy standing there. And he's got the ball. And I go, "Yeah, me, man. Titleist three?" "Yeah, yeah, this is... Yeah, okay. We'll just throw it back." "Well, come on and get it."
And so I go over, and he said, "I'm happy to give you this, but you broke my window." And I look at the window. It's a big picture window, let's say like this. I look at it. I go, "I don't know, I didn't say break it." And he said, "No, right here. It was hit with such velocity that it was like a bullet shot. It just went right through and put a hole in it." And he said, "You broke the window. You owe me."
And I go, "What's a window cost?" "A thousand dollars." And I say, "Okay, that's about, per square inch, that's about fifteen dollars worth. That's what I'm thinking. I'll give you fifteen bucks." And he said, "No, no, no, no. Listen, I can't repair that. The window's broken. You might as well take your five iron and knock everything out of there because when you broke that little square inch, you broke the window."
God says, when you break a law, you're guilty of breaking the whole law. So your violation may be speeding. You were going 41 in a 40 zone. We're in Paradise Valley. Okay, so you're going 45 in a 40 zone, whatever it is. You're just as guilty as the guy, before God in terms of sin, just as guilty as the guy who's down there and he's done something horrific.
Equal Guilt Before God
Bernie Madoff. "What a slime. What a puke. He's ripping people off." And you're waving your pencil at me that says property of State Farm Insurance. Well, you're Bernie Madoff with no imagination. You steal pens. You're the Bernie Madoff of pens. But just as guilty.
And that's step one. And that is so hard because everything in us wants to rationalize away or explain away or begin to somehow sidestep it.
Godly Sorrow Leading to Repentance
Step two is that there's real sorrow for what you've done. 2 Corinthians 7: "Even though I caused you sorrow in my letter, I don't regret it." So 2 Corinthians, he's talking about his first letter. He confronted sin in their life. 1 Corinthians 5, there's a man who's sleeping with his mother, likely his stepmother. And Paul says, "Not even the pagans do this."
"Though I did regret it. I see that it hurt you, but only for a while." I didn't want to do this. I love you so much, I didn't want to do it, but because I love you, I have to do it. "Now I'm happy. Not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us."
2 Corinthians 7:10: "Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation." You can be broken.
A Story of Brokenness
One night, it's a Monday night, phone rings, I get a call. This guy said, "This is Bob. Tom, this is Bob, you don't know me." And I said, "Okay, tell me how we met." And he said, "I was in your Bible study Wednesday night, there for the first time." I said, "Big guy? You had on a blue Ralph Lauren polo shirt." And he said, "Yeah." I said, "Big muscly guy?"
The Mirror Moment
I remember encountering this big, huge guy at a men's retreat. When I introduced myself, he said, "Yeah, that's me." I asked him, "How out of all those people would you know me?" He replied, "Because when I saw you, it was like looking in a mirror. There was this moment where I said, 'God, that's me.'" He mentioned his wife, and I said we needed to meet. He insisted we meet that very night.
We met at the old office over on Alma School in our small conference room. He started talking with a broken heart about how he'd been messing around on his wife. He was crying, and I wasn't saying anything—just watching him. The veins were popping out of his arms as he started pounding the table. "I'll do anything to get her back," he declared.
I asked how his wife was feeling. "She's afraid of me," he admitted. I told him honestly, "I'm afraid of you too. I'm scared of you." But he kept insisting, "I'll do anything, Tom. I'll do anything. Can you meet with us?"
When Tears Don't Equal Truth
We arranged to meet with both of them. He was crying bucketloads of tears, repeatedly saying, "I'll do anything." Then he had to leave town for work. When he returned, Susan and I went to the airport to meet him. This was back when you could go down to the gate area.
He came bouncing off the plane and almost blew right past us. "Hey, Bob! Here we are," we called out. His wife said, "Honey, I want to make it work." But his response shocked us: "No, I don't. I'm just going to get my stuff and take a flight back."
I was stunned. "Whoa, wait a minute. What happened to those crocodile tears? What happened to 'I'll do anything'?" Just because you're crying and sorry doesn't necessarily lead to repentance. That's what this verse is saying. You may not be able to eat, may be losing weight, maybe can't sleep. But in there, you need to find forgiveness.
The Need for a New Course
The third point is that you need to be willing to set a new course. This is what we saw last week in response to Peter's sermon in Acts 2:37. They were cut to the quick when they heard the sermon. They asked, "What should we do?" And Peter said, "Repent."
Here's a sentence you need to write down—I don't know what you do with the stuff you write down, but put it in a place where you can come back to it again. For me, it's a game changer: You are more wicked than you ever imagined and more loved than you ever dreamed.
The Bumper Sticker Illustration
We're incredibly despicable, sinful people. I use this illustration, and afterwards I was reprimanded by about everybody in the room. I promised them I wouldn't use it again that day, but that day is long gone. If this offends you, this is probably my sin. If this describes you, I don't mean to offend—you're the exception, I'm sure.
But consider the bumper sticker that says "My kid's an honor student." Why is that on your car? If you want to reinforce the kid, take him to Dairy Queen and tell him he's a good kid. I don't even like your kid at this point, and I haven't even met him. What's the point of the bumper sticker? You somehow want me to think well of you and your kid. There's so much pride in that.
We are so prideful that we'll put a bumper sticker like that on our car. Maybe I'm overreacting or wrong—if I've offended you, I'm really sorry. But maybe it reveals something about our nature.
Our Self-Absorption
I'm so wicked and so prideful. Sandy has a great insight about how easy it is to hide among people. She was out here five years and nobody really knew her. When I asked how you hide for five years, she said, "It's easy. I just ask people about themselves. If they ask me anything, I'll mention I brought my dog when I moved here, and they'll want to talk about my dog. They're never going to want to talk about me because they're so absorbed with who they are."
That's all you have to do on an airplane or anywhere—just say, "Tell me about you." When somebody asks me how I'm doing, I can talk forever about how I feel. I'm more wicked and more self-absorbed than I ever imagined. But I'm more loved than I ever dreamed. God loves me even though I'm like that. He wants me to change and gives me the power to change.
Understanding Guilt and Grace
When we talk about guilt, it's the fact that you've breached a code of conduct. You're a sinner, and your sin has separated you from God. The only recourse is to come to Christ in repentance and faith. Anything else is religion.
The fact that I'm more wicked than I ever imagined and more loved than I ever dreamed is not a license to sin, but a liberation from sin. It's not permission to say, "Wow, God's forgiven me—sin on!" Martin Luther supposedly said, "Sin boldly." What he meant was sin with confidence that God's forgiven you, but not to go sin more.
The Vertical Before the Horizontal
Step one in this living to win is dealing with guilt. Here's the big conclusion: Now that I have this vertical relationship corrected, now I'm horizontally ready to live. Now I can deal with you. I can't go and begin to deal with you and the people in my life until I've dealt with this vertical situation that I have with God.
Let me pray. Father, thank You for people like Mark and Chrissy who are not just trying to make a point, but to make a difference in this world. We see those issues around us. God, pull us in. Pull us into the things where You're working. Open our hearts and minds and eyes. God, thank You that we can stand before You forgiven, not based on our own effort and our own work, but based on what Jesus did on the cross. God, I pray for those who are here for whom that's new information.
Will You make them so uncomfortable that they'll ask or do something or respond, maybe even today, to be able to say, "I want to give up on religion, but I want to embrace faith"? God, we feel guilty because we are guilty. And we're only going to find relief in a relationship with You.
We've got to do that work in our life. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.