Being Consumed by Guilt — Morning Devotions

Subscribe to the ‘Morning Devotions’ Podcast

Transcript

The name Sarah Winchester may not mean anything to you, but in American history, this lady’s name is very well known. By 19th century standards, she had everything going for her. She was very rich, influential, she had $20 million as an inheritance.

This was in the 1800s, mind you, she had $1000 a day in product royalties, and it was a lot of money back then. She had power and privilege, but she was a very unhappy lady. It was said that as her wealth increased, so did her own personal misery. In 1866, Sarah gave birth to her only child, Annie, and unfortunately this child only lived for 6 months, and she was deeply traumatised over her death.

And she became convinced that her family was cursed, and she started to withdraw from society, and 15 years after that, her husband, William died from tuberculosis.

So she sought the advice of a medium who said that her family was cursed.

Now why did the medium say that? Simply because Sarah had married into a famous family, the Winchester family, and this was the family that had invented the Winchester repeating rifle and was a weapon that had been used to kill thousands of North American Indians and US soldiers. The Winchester rifle, still used today as far as I know, and a very well-recognised brand.

Now this medium told Sarah that the spirits of those who were killed by the rifles had taken revenge on her daughter and her husband, and she advised her to build a large house and just keep on building. And that’s what she did. She bought a house in California. For the next 38 years, the carpenters worked on the house 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, building more and more rooms. And only when she died, that was 1922, the building stopped. She had 6 acres of land.

And this huge mansion that can still be seen today is known as the Winchester Mystery House, 12 bathrooms, 160 rooms, 2000 doors, that kind of thing.

It seemed a bizarre thing to do. Why would she do that? Well, I think the one word here is guilt. She was driven by a soul-destroying sense of guilt, and Sarah Winchester built this house in order to atone for the deaths of those killed by her husband’s rifle, and the home for the dead, as it was known, was an effort to redeem her life, to get rid of that guilt somehow that plagued her.

Hope 103.2 is proudly supported by

Do you know that guilt really can be a terrible thing. It eats away at the heart and soul of people. It robs a person of their joy. One ancient playwright said nothing’s more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.

Guilt and shame, they’re closely connected emotions, but what actually is it, what is guilt? You can buy all sorts of books that talk about guilt, but I like what David Seaman says, he’s got a very good book called Healing Grace.

And he says that guilt is a form of mental and emotional pain that we experience when we feel responsible for doing or not doing something that violates our personal moral standard.

In other words, there’s something inside us that knows when we’ve done something wrong. It might be a disturbed conscience or a sense of guilt. One little six-year-old girl was asked, what’s a conscience, and she said, it’s the spot inside that burns if you’re not good. Now we know what she meant. Guilt comes when we violate our own inner code of conduct. And you hear people say, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, that’s bringing forth the guilt.

But it’s not healthy, you know, to hang on to our guilt. We need to deal with it. This can lead us, I think, to a new sense of understanding about ourselves, and we need to understand that it’s not a healthy way to live, being consumed by guilt. But God’s word says, for example repent, turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out. That’s in Acts 3:19, so that as that time of refreshing may come from the Lord. So what I’m saying is that God can wipe the slate clean.

The feelings of guilt can be taken away through the divine action of God’s love.

Let’s Pray

Heavenly Father, we thank You that today we can come before You. We know, Lord, that as we hear Your words, your words bring comfort. They bring healing, and most of all, Lord, they bring that sense of redemption to bring a sense of cleansing, particularly, Lord, when we are burdened by guilt. May we listen to your voice of encouragement. I pray for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Feature image: CanvaPro