Dealing With Our Guilt

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.
Acts 3:19

Whether by thought, word or deed, we all sin more than we care to admit.And there are three ways of dealing with it:
(1) Ignore it. Don't think about it; don't ask what damage lies back there; don't ask if there is mopping up to do. Bury yesterday in a flood of distracting experiences. Just keep on running. Perhaps the past won't have time to catch up withus.
(2) Accept the burden and get used to it. This means living with an increasing weight of guilt, recognising that life will get slower and slower as the burden gets greater and greater. That's a recipe for depression.
(3) Deal with it. A lot of us spend our lives apologising and feeling bad about our habits and hang-ups - but we never do anything about them! Repentance literally means "a change of direction." Jesus told the story of the Prodigal Son who squandered half of his father's wealth before making a total mess of his life. When he reached a point at which the pigs he tended were eating better than he was, he finally acknowledged that he was lost: "How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will...go back to my father and say to him: 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you'" ( Luke 15:17-18). The father opened his heart and his arms and welcomed him back home. And God will do that for you too, if you'll just repent and return to Him.