The Struggle with Guilt

True confessions:  I feel guilty.  A lot.

Virtually every woman I know feels guilty much of the time, too.   We struggle with guilt over being good enough moms, wives, daughter and friends.  We feel guilty about what we eat and how much exercise we get (or don’t get!)  We feel guilty over burning the candle at both ends. And if we aren’t running ourselves ragged, we feel guilty about that, too.  We feel guilty at home. We feel guilty at work.  We feel guilty at play.  Sometimes, we even feel guilty at rest. We feel guilty over losing our patience.  We feel guilty about speaking our mind, and guilty when we don’t.

Does all this guilt sound as crazy to you as it does to me? After all, what does our collective guilt accomplish–really?  Not much, except for more guilt.

So what’s a girl to do?  Does guilt ever have a positive, productive purpose?

Guilt can have a positive purpose–if it’s conviction from the Holy Spirit, which leads us to positive change.  This is what the Bible calls “repentance”.  Sometimes we should feel guilty. If we don’t, it means our conscience isn’t working properly.  But more often than not, women struggle with a kind of guilt that works against positive change, rather than towards it.  This kind of guilt only leads to shame, feelings of worthlessness, lack of hope, and discouragement.  It’s the kind of guilt that whispers “you’ll never measure up”, “you are a terrible person”, or “how can you even call yourself a Christian?”  It leaves us feeling unmotivated and distant from God.

But God has a better way! I videoed a segment for my home church a few days ago and we had a few extra minutes after the taping, so the producer asked me to do a short segment on guilt sort of “on the fly”, while he kept the camera rolling.  Check out the video below for tips to deal with the ever-present struggle with guilt.

Donna Jones- Conviction vs Condemnation from CrosslineTV on Vimeo.