Good morning!

No matter when you’re reading this, I hope it finds you full of joy! I have told several people I would be posting about some of our fishbowl questions from the last several Thursday nights.  If you’re reading this and you’re unfamiliar with the concept – fishbowl Thursday came from something our student ministry did a few years ago. They had the students write down question pertaining to their spiritual lives (loosely pertaining in some cases) and they tried to answer them from a biblical perspective.  We adopted a similar approach but replaced the cards and fishbowl with texts and my yellow note pad so I could keep up with what had been asked without connecting a person to it.

Here’s a few questions that have been asked so far.

• Why does my life mirror the apostle Peter? I seem to make great choices at times and have everything under control, then in the blink of an eye I can do the dumbest thing ever.
• How do I share my faith with someone who is a professed atheist or agnostic?
• Which Bible version is the best and are there issues with some of them? – reasons I should/shouldn’t use certain ones

The last question I’ll mention is the one we covered last week and I want to spend just a minute recapping it.

Why do I feel guilty over every little thing? Is that healthy or right?

• The short answer is:  no it’s not healthy or right.  God never intended for us to feel guilty over the sin in our lives.  That doesn’t mean He condones it, or our sin doesn’t produce consequences.  God hates sin – mine and yours. His goal for a believer in Jesus is for us to live a life filled with holiness and love. However, He knows we will sin.  It’s inescapable. He still loves us anyway.  Romans 5:8 is proof of how He feels about us and our sin – “but God showed His love for us by loving me while I was still a sinner”.  He loves me, but hates my sin – but love wins.  He loves me so much that He made a way for me to conquer my sin and have the relationship with Him I was created to have – a relationship by salvation through Jesus!  Guilt is an emotional prison created by Satan to keep me beat down and prevent me from becoming who God wants me to be.  Conviction of sin comes from God, and is intended to spur my confession of sin and repentance from that sin.  Scripture never talks about us feeling guilty over sin.  Once it is confessed and I choose to move on from it, God sees it as over and done.  Psalm 103 clearly says He removes my sin as far as the East is from the West.  God doesn’t struggle with our sin after we’ve done what is asked of us in scripture, but we do struggle with it.  It’s much harder for me to forgive myself and move on.
• We also can feel guilty because we have taken ourselves out of God’s will for our lives.  I can agonize over and scrutinize ever little decision to the point I paralyze myself.  I’m afraid to make any choice because I might choose the wrong thing or make the wrong move. We constantly agonize over the wrong decisions and choices. We think “how can God use me?” when we choose poorly.  Guilt over poor decisions and choices can handcuff us to inaction.

I hope the questions and answers encourage you today!

If some of the other questions I mentioned spark something in you, please feel free to respond or ask for more information from our discussion of those.

We’ll tackle more questions this week!

WG