Sometimes the cheap imitation can seem like the real thing.

Knock offs can look and sometimes even feel like the real deal.

But they’re still not real.

Cheap fragrances can mimic pretty closely the authentic perfume.

But they’re still not real.

A fake I.D. or counterfeit money can fool some of the people some of the time.

But they’re still not real.

There is real guilt and there is false guilt.

I’ve experienced both and they seem almost identical.

They seem the same, but they are very different.

One is based on reality and the other is based on perception.

Yesterday I watched a video of someone documenting their journey on dealing with guilt that they know in their mind is not real, but that has affected their life just the same.  As tears trickled down their face, I found myself reaching toward my computer screen and trying to wipe them away.  My heart broke for this person and for all of us who have ever wrestled with the very real dilemma of very false guilt.

False guilt feels like real guilt.

But it’s still NOT real.

Real guilt is based on the reality of something that we’ve actually done wrong.  It has a PURPOSE – to correct wrong thinking, wrong attitudes and wrong behavior.  It’s meant to MOTIVATE, to grow us, to change us and better us.  God uses that catch in our heart, that pit in our stomach, that trigger in our mind to draw us back to the right path.

False guilt is based on our misguided perception of something.  Sometimes it grows out of a sense of obligation.  Sometimes we are manipulated into feeling like something was our fault that wasn’t.  And sometimes we talk ourselves into believing that we deserve to carry that burden that we were never meant to pick up in the first place.  False guilt has NO PURPOSE.  It only destroys.  Because it’s based on perception and not reality, it keeps us from changing and growing. It stifles and invades and paralyzes.

Feeling true guilt is a gift from God.

Feeling false guilt is a curse from Satan.

When Jesus went to the cross, He took on both our real guilt and our false guilt.  He felt their weight, their consuming heaviness.  They were nailed to a cross that day with Him.  When He “bore our sin” and pain, they were on the list.

True guilt was forgiven.

False guilt was eliminated.

Freedom was offered.

From then on, every day that we walk on this planet we can claim all three of those truths.  We can still experience forgiveness and freedom on a daily basis and know that false guilt has no hold on us.  It’s power was deflated at the cross.

I pray today for those of us trying to wrestle out of the chains of false guilt.  Jesus has the key.  Let Him release you from its imagined power.  Let Him walk you out into the light of true freedom.  It’s a beautiful, beautiful place….

2 Corinthians 5:17 – Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

Isaiah 43:25 – “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.”

John 10:10 – The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Psalm 103:12 – As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.