How To Deal With Guilt - Psalm 51:9-11

"Don’t keep looking at my sins. Remove the stain of my guilt. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and make me willing to obey you." All of us commit sins and our sinning is usually accompanied by a personal sense of guilt. While the psalmist understood that he needed absolution from the guilt of sin as legal consequence of God's universal justice system, he also understood that guilt had serious and debilitating psychological and spiritual effects on individuals that needed to be addressed. When the psalmist sinned, he repented and asked God to forgive his sin because he knew all sin was an act of opposition or rebellion against God: "Have mercy on me, O God...Against you, and you alone, have I sinned" (vs. 1,4). But the psalmist also asked God to remove the residual effects of the guilt that accompanied his sin: "Wash me clean from my guilt. Purify me from my sin" (vs. 2). To the psalmist, sin caused the heart to be stained with guilt and so he asked God not only to forgive the sin but to clean up the stain of guilt. The guilt-stained heart could be cleansed only by the restorative power of the Holy Spirit. When you seek restoration from sin, the Holy Spirit cleanses your heart by renewing your spirit, restoring the joy of salvation, and enabling you to once again obey God and accomplish His will so you won't be spiritually incapacitated by guilt.