so I was reminded of uh and I wanted to share a couple of my childhood stories before we go into the sermon the first was when I was in Middle School and our school was um located next to what they call a plaza this was the preall days so those of you are from chenai you know it's called Fountain Plaza and um I did have some my friends were not that great so they would encourage me during lunch break to um go with them to this place and it had a video game arcade uh where you can play video games but you have to drop coins to play those games I don't know if they have those things anymore you might see them on some in some movie theaters around here the only problem was they all had coins and I didn't had coins so I would only have to stand and watch them play every time and then I found in my home my mom had a bowl of coins so that she would drop all the change whenever she goes shopping and and and and that became increasingly attractive to me and one morning I decided after my shower why not I take some of these coins and and and and I grabbed some coins quickly and looking around making sure nobody saw and felt a little guilty about it but when and that afternoon uh when I jumped school during lunch uh went with my friends I had my own coins and I could play my own games it felt so great that led me to want to go and do this again and again and I kept um I didn't want to call it stealing at that time I was thinking I'm just taking some coins until one day my sister saw me taking those coins and I didn't see her see me and then she went and snitched on me to my mom um and then my mom came and sat next to me and I would take these coins and I had a very clever way of hiding them I would put them in my I used to have a pencil case and and leave it inside my bag so it's not immediately visible and she came next to me and she said can I see your pencil box and and and I was like why would you want to see my pencil box she didn't ask me directly if you know she was hoping that I will come clean and confess that I met that I did this and I was so livid at my sister that she did this see I remember it till today the other time was when I um it was a new year um we had come straight from church and my mom asked me to fix a light um in our home and as I was fixing it I broke it and uh nobody saw it and then she came and asked me did you break it and I said no again and this time she saw me breaking it and she said you want to start the new year by lying straight to me how do you think your year is going to be and I remembered that whole year I actually was sulking thinking about oh this year is going to be a horrible year you know because I started the year with lie these are two simple stories but the common thing between the both of them was my different ways of how I dealt with guilt you know guilt is something uh that can be either a very heavy burden it can be a invisible weight that presses down on our heart can steal our joy and peace we have all felt it at some point of time or the other is isn't it especially when we have failed when we have hurt someone we love when we have betrayed our own core values or when we fall short of God's expectations guilt is a very powerful emotion you know guilt Whispers in our Quiet Moments replaying our mistakes amplifying our shame and making us wonder if Redemption is ever possible yet guilt is more than a painful feeling you know it's a Crossroads a m a moment of profound spiritual and emotional significance if it is left unaddressed guilt can imprison Us in regret bitterness and despair but embraced honestly and confronted courageously and surrendered to God's grace guilt becomes the first step towards genuine atonement transformation and healing you know the pain and heaviness of guilt is something that all of us have felt or experienced at some point of time or another but God provides for us a way to move from the crushing weight of sin to experiencing the liberating Wonder of his grace and today we are going to look at our journey from how do we move from from guilt to Grace reflected in this chapter that was read to us uh in The Book of Leviticus you know we have completed the first two books of the Bible uh Leviticus is told uh is one of the least read books in the whole Bible is there anyone here this morning for whom Leviticus is your most favorite book of the Bible I guess probably not is there anyone here who has read The Book of Leviticus with eager desire multiple times I guess probably not yet in this book is embedded one of the significant and most Central themes of the Gospel called atonement and this chapter in The Book of Leviticus just right in the middle of the book is a very pivotal chapter that unlocks what the meaning of atonement is you know in the chapters preceding this God has given the Israelites a way for them to offer sacrifices he has given them priests and he has told them how the priests have to prepare themselves and now in this chapter he is going to unlock for them a central theme called atonement and interestingly as this chapter begins you see it begins with pain it begins with guilt and grief you know Aaron who's the brother of Moses he lost his sons because they made an unauthorized fire in the Tabernacle we'll come back to this in a moment you know God gave instructions for setting up this Tabernacle which we saw in the previous sermon for a singular reason that he wanted to just be with his people dwell with his people that's the universal theme throughout the Bible our God is a God who always wants to be with us and he wants us to be with him and in a very localized way he gave the Tabernacle to say I'm going to be with you in your desert as you walk through the desert I want to be there I want my presence to dwell within you so the Tabernacle was a place of God's presence but God's presence invokes a strict necessary Regiment of how he can be approached you you know previously God's presence was high up on Mount Si and people could not access him when they went near him or even when the animals touched the mount on which God was there they died and so he appoints his mediator Moses and it was through Moses he reveals to them and he gives them details on the various sacrifices of how they can purify themselves before they come into His presence because God knew that as his children we fail we do things intentionally and sometimes unintentionally that go against what God wants us to do or that go against what we want each other to do we heard ourselves we heard God and so he wants to create a way for us to approach so he sets apart this day it is called the day of atonement or Yom kipur and and the Jews celebrate it even now it will show up in your calendars it is one day in a year where it's the only time that the high priest could enter the most holy place so we are going to look at three things from this passage the first is the atonement of the high priest the second is the atonement through the sprinkling of blood and third is atonement through the scape goat and through these three things we are going to see how God has opened a way for you and me to move from a place of guilt and shame to experiencing his grace firstly we want to look at the atonement of the high priest so God calls Moses and he tells Moses to first ask ask Aaron who is the high priest to prepare himself you know the significant thing to see here is Aaron was himself not perfect he was just like the other people he had already created a golden calf violating the very first Commandments of the Ten Commandments and so it is very ironic that God would still pick someone like Aaron to be the representative of the people it goes contrary to what we see in our day-to-day world isn't it when you want someone to represent you you want that person to be better than you or to be the best person you know for all the basketball fans you know Steph Curry is The Unofficial captain of Golden State Warriors because he's consistent and his he's perfect in what he does and it's easy to follow somebody like him and in in an army usually it's the best soldiers who are promoted to be majors and captains and leans and Generals so others can follow them and trust them but here God picks Aaron someone just like them someone who has messed and keeps messing up just like them and here right at the start he we are reminded of an incident that has happened in Aaron's own life Aaron's two children were killed because they approached God's presence in a way contrary to what God had asked them we read about that in Leviticus chapter 10 the first few verses in Leviticus chapter 10 if you turn your Bibles we read verses 1 to 3 now nadab and abiu the sons of Aaron each took his sensor and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord which he had not commanded them and fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them and they died before the Lord then Moses said to Aaron this is what the Lord has said among those who are near me I will be Sanctified and before all the people I will be glorified and Aaron held his peace wow it starts with pain you know though Aaron gets the job of being the high priest he had a big cost he had to pay and he's probably already feeling terribly guilty about what has happened you know as a father losing your children produces guilt in this way perhaps you was thinking what could I have done to save them combined with the pain and the grief of having lost them guilt and grief are a deadly combination can pull anyone down he perhaps felt he left his children down and he was drowning in them but God picked Aon you know our usual response to guilt there are several different ways we can respond to Guild and I want to give around five different ways we do and with some real world examples from counselors who have come across this and different different counseling situations because you and I may not be in a situation like Aaron where we having children serving the lord and the Lord strikes our kids dead but the way we respond to guilt happens in our normal day-to-day life events now there are five ways we may respond to guilt by sulking by denying by escaping by scapegoating and by fleeing so what do I mean by that let's Let me give some practical examples of suling John forgets their wedding anniversary when his wife gently reminds him he sinks into a suking mood repeatedly saying I always M things up I'm a terrible husband he stays stuck in his self- condemnation agreeing he's guilty but refusing to move forward leaving him depressed or distant or there is the situation where Emily accident ly breaks her brother's favorite toy she admits it's her fault but then sits alone in her room all afternoon repeatedly thinking I always ruin everything her sadness lingers and she stays isolated unwilling to forgive herself or accept Comfort or think of Alex who has an important exam that he fails because he procrastinated and Alex admits I'm always messing up with my future I'm never able to accomplish anything that I plan so he withdraws from his friends isolates himself in his dorm replaying the failure over and over leaving him depressed and stuck this is what unhealthy response to guilt can do sulking the second response we have to guilt is denying you know in the case of sulking the person agrees that they have messed up they own it and they just want to stay in it now in the denying the person disagrees that it's their problem and fights it you know Maria spends too much on Amazon purchases significantly affecting her monthly budget by the way these are not from our church okay I'm I I'm not I'm just picking this from some counselor's case studies okay don't go home and start telling your husband or wife he was talking about you I'm not but if I am then maybe there's a lesson for you there so when her husband confronts her about the Amazon shopping bills she sharply argues back accusing him of being controlling and unfair instead of facing her mistake she denies responsibility and lashes out deepening the conflict or for our kids here is one Jacob takes cookies without permission and gets caught by his mom instead of admitting his wrongdoing he immediately argues back saying loudly that's not true you never trust me it's not fair you always brand me he rejects responsibility and fights back refusing to accept that he did something wrong now this is the denying response of guilt third response is escaping you know in this response you agree that you messed up and you agree and and the guilt is real but you want to ignore Tim harshly criticizes his wife during an argument as he shares this with the counselor later when his wife mentions how much he hurt her feelings he quietly nods and admits wrongdoing yet quickly shifts attention to his work Hobbies or social media and avoids deeper conversation he acknowledges guilt but uses busyness as an escape from True reconciliation now fourth response to guilt is what's called is a word that actually comes uh it's it's in the English because it comes actually from Leviticus 16 and it's popular we use every time scapegoating scapegoating we agree the person agrees that they are guilty but then always deflected to someone else and makes them Escape good Tina the counselor says recognizes that she's often impatient and snaps at her husband I don't think we have any tinas in our church by the way been confronted she acknowledges it briefly but immediately says well if you only helped out more around in the house I wouldn't be so irritated would I rather than taking responsibility fully she deflects her guilt by shifting blame on someone else and the last response of guilt is probably fleeing you know in this case the person may agree or disagree but avoid thinking about it you know after a heated argument when Tom harshly judges his wife's parenting style he feels uncomfortable about the pain he caused rather than dealing with it he immerses himself in excessive work or Hobbies or even alcohol refusing to face his guilt or accept the Brokenness ultimately distending distancing himself emotionally you see there are all these so many different responses to guil and we may all take or respond in one or more of these ways in one or more different situations but none of these are a healthy way to live our lives and they prevent genuine healing and Reconciliation and none of these would work you know guilt can't be suppressed or deflected or denied or fled from it always has a way of coming back around it will show up in some form or the other or think about guilt as a nation you know as there was recently in Germany we all know the history of Germany they went through World War II and what the Nazis did so the people in Germany have a very ambiguous way of dealing with guilt they have a national guilt some of them feel stuck they feel terribly uh responsible even now and and and are stuck there whereas others have a sense of indifference and there are some who actually have figured out a healthy way to deal with it but when you have wronged God or someone you love let me ask you my dear friends what is your response so in This Book of Leviticus God is showing us a correct or a better way to deal with guilt what do you do when someone is when when you are wronged or when someone is wronged by you or when someone wrongs you or think or or has said or done something to hurt you and you feel are guilty what do you want them to do or what do you want these are some questions we can get from this book now if you look around in in the world around us or in other world religions or philosophies the world wants retribution it's always eye for an eye teeth for a teeth do something so that your guilt can be atoned the only way for Guilt to be addressed by both the offender and the one who is offended is when the other person does something to atone for it and that's the expectation isn't it but what what if it's not possible and how would you know what is enough to atone for you know Aaron when God tells him the reason why he did what he did he said he was at peace he was able to embrace that Aaron trusted God's response and now God wants to show in Vivid detail his plan for dealing with guilt and it is so gracious God does not tell people okay let me tell you I know you mess up you will always mess up and in fact you even before they are moving into the promised land I know once you go there you will still keep getting attracted to things that are more shinier and glossier than me you will start having relationships with people you should not be having you will start getting attracted to money and power rather than being satisfied with me I know you are going to do this but I'm going to give you a way in which you can atone for that and that way is not something where I'm going to ask you to go and hurt yourself he's introducing the idea to them of a gracious path where someone or something other than them will be atoning for their guilt you know other philosophies and religions in the world also do these things they either totally deny guilt altogether when something happens or they ask you to inflict or experience pain or suffering to atone yourself but here God is demonstrating Grace in The Book of Leviticus in this particular chapter first of all by picking someone like Aaron as a high priest who is so flawed and maybe even more flawed than you and me to be his representative and God was gracious to Aaron because as a high priest he has a high responsibility for his children his sons who didn't offer the right fire he killed he could have killed Aaron for creating a golden uh U animal for others to worship a calf but he did not so God is telling Aaron you're my high priest you're going to represent this people and I'm going to show you a gracious way of how you can come into my presence and experience Grace first personally for you and through you as a representative to the whole nation of Israel I'm instituting this thing called atonement so we read there are five things God tells Aaron to do from verses 2 to 4 it says and the Lord said to Moses tell Aaron your brother not to come at any time into the holy place inside the whale be before the mercy seat that is on the ark so that he may not die for I will appear in the cloud Over The Mercy Seat but in this way Aaron shall come into the holy place with a bull from the herd for a sin offering and a RAM for a burnt offering he shall put on the holy linen coat and shall have the linen undergarment on his body and he shall tie the linen sash around his waist and wear the linen turban these are the holy garments he shall bathe his body in water and then put them on first of all he warns Aaron you cannot go anytime it's only on this day every year that you will come into my presence and I will appear on the cloud Over The Mercy Seat secondly before you come I know you are not a perfect person I know you have messed up but I'm not going to unleash my anger on you I want you to sacrifice a bull for a sin offering and and the and the size of the animal was dependent on the role and responsibility of the person if you're poor you could just bring doubs but if you're someone who's the high priest God was telling him I don't want to execute my judgment on you and judge you for your shortcomings I'm going to put that on this bll that you're offering for things you may have done intentionally or unintentionally third he tells them he asks him to do a burnt offering which is always an offering that expresses a desire of Devotion to God and fourth he TS him how he should enter into the most holy place was in a different attire than he normally is usually a priest's attire was flamboyant it is with great ornaments and precious jewels and it was to communicate the significance of the office of a priest or God's servant so that people will have respect it was to be a royal priest and we are all called to be royal priests even now but when he enters into to the most holy Place God tells him you're going to remove all your fancy robes all your worldly accomplishments Pride we I don't care who you are I want you to come in humbly take away all of them and wear the linen dress which was the dress of a slave and not just that I want you to cleanse your external self thoroughly because I want you to understand you're entering the holy place so that was something God asks him to do in verses 6 to 10 he gives a detailed description of how this has to happen it may sound boring but it's significant because he's going to repeat that also for the nation of Israel he says in verse 6 Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting and Aaron shall cast lots over the goats one lot for the Lord and the other lot for aesel which is another word for scape goat and Aaron shall present the goat on which the Lord fill for the Lord and use it as a sin offering but the goat on which the Lord fill for aasil shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it that it may be sent away Into the Wilderness to ISO you know what God is doing is first I want you to sacrifice the bull first for yourself in a covenantal fashion because our God is a covenantal god he's representing as a representative for him and his family first is the bull God saying I'm not going to unleash my wrath on you for all the things that you did intentionally or unintentionally against me and not just for you for your family and for the nation of Israel he wants them to sacrifice one of the two goats my dear friends especially father's year we have a burden to pray for our family and our children and all of us for our nation for God's grace as we and our family and our nation keep doing things that are not pleasant to God and we need to come to the ultimate sacrifice Jesus Christ who is our high priest will come to that in the end so the first thing that God paves the way is for them to have a high priest one like them one who fails exactly like them and a pathway for him to enter without being consumed secondly and centrally and most significant aspect of the atonement was the sprinkling of blood you know Aaron has to first take blood sacrificed from the bull to atone for his sins and we read that in verse 11 Aaron shall present the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house he shall kill the bull as a sin offering for himself and he shall take a sensor full of coals of fire from the altar before the Lord and two handfuls of sweet incense beaten small and he shall bring it inside the whale and put the incense on the fire before the Lord that the cloud of the incense May cover The Mercy Seat that is over the testimony so that he does not die and he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the front of the mercy seat on the east side and in front of The Mercy Seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times Aaron has to embrace God's provision gracious provision of the bull as a sin offering and he's is asked to take a sensus sensor full of coals and to create an incense and and and and and a cloud of incense because as he enters this Most Holy place that incense the cloud will rise up over the mercy seed and it will protect him from seeing God and it will protect uh and it will prevent God from seeing him lest he be consumed that was the purpose of the incence because God didn't want him to be perished and he wanted the blood to be sprinkled on what is called the mercy seed you know a very important chapter to read in parallel as you read Leviticus 16 is Hebrews chapter 9 I would encourage you to go and read it later in your home you know Hebrews chapter 9:12 says indeed under the law almost everything is purified with blood and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins why is this is our God a bloodthirsty God a blood hungry monstrous God at first glance that is how it may look like and in fact if our view is Frozen in just the Leviticus 16 chapter's perspective of God people very often tend to think of our God like that kind of a bloodthirsty God and that's why it's important to remember Le icus was just one step along the progressive Redemptive historical progression of God's revelation of what his plan was to redeem you and me we we are not expected to do what is written there and and it was along those lines we have to see where did this start from now this was not started in the Book of Leviticus it was part of the old Covenant the very first command that God gave Adam and Eve was do this don't eat of this tree and you will live and the coroller was if you disobey my commandment he says the day you eat of it you will die so you see it was built very much within the Covenant God gives life to Adam and Eve and Promises eternal life to them by not breaking his commandment only one commandment they didn't even have the Ten Commandments because he said the day you break it you will die because you're saying that you're going to find some other source than me for life and that's why in the New Testament it says the wages of sin is death so blood symbolizes life it symbolizes that instead of that person dying some other animal has been killed and when that is sprinkled on what is called The Mercy Seat God can bestow mercy and Grace the action had a meaning it meant God please do not take my life and have mercy on me by accepting the blood of this animal and forgiving me and verse 15 it says he does this he has to do first that for himself and now he has to do that for the whole nation he says then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the whale and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of The Mercy Seat and so he repeats this by killing one of the two goats for the people and sprinkling it and then he takes that blood and goes outside the holy place and sprinkles all aspects of the temple and the Tabernacle and until then nobody else is allowed to enter this Temple and then comes the dramatic most significant event of the day of atonement the atonement through the lamb after God justice has been met personally for absolving his sins and the sins of people now comes the time where the holy priest a and he walks out and now the whole people are gathered in he has Sanctified all areas of this Tabernacle for people's intentional and unintentional sins and now he calls them all and they get to witness they couldn't see everything he did inside but now this thing God wants them to see because there is a very significant aspect to it in verse 20 onwards he says and when he has made an end of atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar he shall present the live goat now this goat has not been killed it has not been sacrificed and a Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel and all their transgressions all their sins and he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away Into the Wilderness by the hand of a man who is in Readiness the goat shall Bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area and he shall let the goat Go free in the wilderness and this is the scapegoat this was the highlight the biggest highlight of the day of atonement this was the most grandest spectacle of the day of atonement that everybody was able to see and God wanted everyone to see God wanted them to see by Aaron laying both his hands usually you just lay one hand to transfer when he lays both his hands and he was confessing over the iniquities of all of them and send this goat away why did God want to be this to be done already there was a goat that was sacrificed and its blood was sprinkled on The Mercy Seat so they can receive Mercy this was to help them to see and understand the tremendous extraordinary grace of God in how he deals with our failures this was another Act of God the grace of God to tell them that once this was done they would do this Aaron would put his hands on this goat and pray and confess for the whole nation and this other person will take this goat and it will be sent to a place where it was called a place that the goat cannot come back the scapegoat was meant to take all of their sins and be sent away which should never return and sometimes some commentators say they it was taken to a place where there was a sharp cliff and even pushed out so that it may jump down and no one knows what happened to it because they can be assured it will never have a way of coming back the emphasis was the emphasis on the scapegoat was that it will go and it will take all their sins on itself and it will not be remembered it will never come back to remind them of their sins as well because it was to meant to tell them yes I accepted your sacrifice I want to tell you I'm going to remember your sins no more that is how God deals with our guilt when we go humbly before him and confess our sins he's faithful and just not only to forgive our sins he remembers them no more that's the grace of God my dear friends that's what David prays even when he has committed the most gory sin in Psalm 50 one and he prays his prayer of confession he gets this assurance as far as the East is from the West so far is my sin removed from me because that's how far the scapegoat has been taken but how do we deal with guilt of others we often tend to tithe this goat between us and others when they hurt us because we want to keep reminding them isn't it we don't want to forgive or let that guilt go away or even if we forgive we keep dangling this goat Satan wants to dangle this goat always before us because he's the accuser of Brethren to remind us always of our guilt so he can keep us nailed down but God has graciously removed our guilt forever and he wants you and I to embrace that and offer that to others this was already there for people in the old Covenant but when you read Hebrews chapter 9 it tells us we have something even better we have the perfect high priest Jesus himself who unlike Aaron did not have anything that he had to sacrifice for because he was a perfect person and unlike Aaron who had to go and find a bull to sacrifice Jesus also became our perfect sacrifice he himself was the sacrifice and unlike Aaron who had to go into the whale only once a year when Jesus was died his body was torn apart his body was the whale in the Old Testament that you and I now have access anytime and every time into the most holy place and I don't have to even explain this I just want to read from Hebrews n for us it it so beautifully shows how this comes true it says read with me if you have your Bibles turn with me to Hebrews chapter 9 verse 11-4 and then from verse 24 onwards but when Christ appeared as the high priest of the good things that have come then through the greater and more perfect tent not made with hands that is not of his creation he entered once for all into the holy places not by means of the blood of goats and calvs but by means of his own blood thus securing an eternal Redemption for if the blood of goats and Bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a Hyer sanctify for the purification of the flesh how much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God purify our conscience from dead Works to serve the Living God verse 24 says for Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands which are copies of the true things but into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf nor was it to offer himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own but then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world was as but as it is he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself you know lastly in Hebrews 10:1 15 it says consequently when Christ came into the world he said sacrifices and offerings you have not desired but a body you have prepared for me Jesus Christ fulfilled all of these typological things that people in the Old Testament had so that you and I now have a gracious way to deal with with our guilt we can experience the grace of God any time every time and in the rest of this chapter in in Leviticus 16 he tells them to do this every year to take this day as a day of rest so they can come and experience the rest for themselves not just physically but spiritually and that's why we do this every week we want to take Sunday as a day of rest and not work because we need this every week to come and participate in this communion another reason we do Comm every week is so that we can remember this Rich sacrifice of Christ and the grace of God that is for us so we can receive Grace and give Grace to others and if that's the cost that it took the body of Christ and his blood that cleanses us you and I have a responsibility the same Hebrews 10: 19 onwards it says therefore brother s since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus by the New and Living Way that he opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh and since we have a great priest over the house of God 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 let us hold fast the confession of Our Hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful and let let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day Drawing Near having received the grace of God through the atoning sacrifice we are called to live a different kind of a life we are called to stir up one another in love we are called to stir up one another to love we are stir called to stir up one another for good works because of the Wonder of atonement Christ our high priest his body is the whale that was torn and he now Tabernacles within us so let me ask you my dear friends how do you deal with your guilt take them to the cross and Embrace Christ's sacrifice you don't have to go do any of those five ways in dealing with your own guilt or with the guilt of others you can let go of your guilt and shame and receive the grace of God in your lives you can do the same let go of the guilt and shame of others and forgive them graciously and having received this freedom and Grace we can start living holy lives San Sanctified lives that reflect what Jesus did on the cross you know in 2013 Reggie Shaw caused a car accident due to texting while driving resulting in two fatalities overwhelmed by guilt he openly confessed and sought reconciliation willing to take the consequences of his actions and dedicated himself to raising awareness about distracted driving you know his honesty and dedication not only brought personal healing for himself but it prevents similar tragedies from happening to others he wanted uh he didn't want to stay in that guilt and let that eat himself he did what he could he received the Forgiveness of God he embraced the consequences of his actions and he wanted to do something to stop what caused so much pain in another counselor shares the story after years of secrecy a husband revealed a one night Affair to his wife which he had been postponing for a long time feeling immense guilt and shame because he always thought if he said this his wife was going to leave him and go but rather than walking away he drew the courage to confess before God and to her and together they faced Brokenness with counseling prayer and deep honesty and together together that decision to confront guilt in a Godly way restored their marriage deepen their bond and renewed their faith my dear friends dealing with guilt God's way can produce beautiful things it can release us from bondage release us from shame release us from Pain and when we extend that to others truly this world can become a beautiful place shall we pray and