Guilt or Conviction? 

A while back I was wondering what to do a devotion on.  The words guilt or conviction were running through my mind.  But is that what God wanted me to share?  God answered me - as He always does.  When I was working, I would drive pass a church on the way and there was usually a catchy saying or verse on their sign.  That day, I didn’t know that they had changed the sign so I wasn’t expecting to see anything new when I drove past.  But I was wrong.  The sign read “God is greater than any guilt” 1 John 3:20.  That verse says: “For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.”  And the next verse is: “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God.”

So, what that says to me is that God doesn’t give us guilt.  Jeremiah 17:9 says “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?”  Our heart gives us the guilt but God is greater than our heart.  The problem that presents itself next is this - is it guilt or conviction?  We know that the Holy Spirit convicts us.  But how can we tell if we are condemning ourselves or being convicted by the Holy Spirit?

Good question!  I don’t claim to know the answer.  But I can share how I determine if it is guilt or conviction.  In the beginning of my Christian walk I did not know the difference between the two.  As an example, when I first got saved one of the first convictions I had was the amount of shoes that I owned.  When I counted them, it was over 75 pairs.  I went through all the shoes and got rid of the ones that I didn’t “need”.  Was it guilt or conviction?  Did I feel guilty because I had so many shoes or was it conviction because my focus was on stuff?  I believe it may have been conviction because I was focused on stuff.  I found security in stuff.  Every time I saw a pair of shoes that I didn’t have, I bought them.   Someone told me once that people at K-Mart stay up all night figuring out what new shoes to sell because they know I will buy them!    I thought I could weather any storm as long as I had enough stuff.  I wasn’t leaning on God to provide for all my needs, I was gathering stuff to provide for myself. 

Owning lots of shoes is not a sin and God may not convict anyone else about it - unless we are taking our focus off Him and putting it on stuff.  I still buy shoes (just ask my husband) but I do limit myself to buying what I really will use or really need.  I don’t want to fall back into the trap of focusing on stuff to provide for me.

One of the things I have discovered is that God loves to bless me.  When He gives me good things there is no reason that I should feel guilty. God chooses whom He will bless.  But let’s say that God provides a way for me to have a beautiful pair of new shoes.  He just might use my new shoes as a way to witness to someone that I may not have had a chance to before.  Maybe a woman will see me somewhere and notice my new shoes.  Maybe she will want to know where I got them.  Maybe the Holy Spirit will use that exact moment to create a divine appointment for me and that woman. Or maybe God just wanted to bless me because He loves me.

Guilt or conviction?  The next time you feel guilty about something, take a good look at it.  Is there a reason to feel guilty?  Take a good look at the reason if there is one.  Does it have any biblical basis?  If it doesn’t have a biblical basis, then praise God for the blessing and move on.  But if there is something there, then maybe it is a conviction.  Ask God to show you more.  Ask Him to confirm it to you. When Gideon needed confirmation, God gave it to him (see Judges 6:36-40). If God is convicting you about something, you can be sure that He will answer your prayer.  If you have walked away from a blessing because you felt you didn’t deserve it, then you just allowed yourself to be robbed.   Open your hands wide and allow God to bless you!