I have asked God to forgive me of this sin a hundred times, and I still feel guilty.

God has promised that if you confess your sins, He will cleanse you of your unrighteousness.

I remember many years ago going to see a minister to tell him about a struggle I was having with guilt.

And I went into his office, told him what my problem was, and he opened the Bible for me to the first epistle of John, chapter 1.

And he asked me to read this passage out loud.

And he pointed to verse 8 of chapter 1 of 1 John, and so I read it.

It says this,

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

Let me just pause there for a moment.

One of the customary ways that we deal with guilt is to deny it, or to seek to excuse it by some process of rationalization.

Here John is speaking to that scenario, when he says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.

We all have sin, and therefore we all have contracted guilt.

And if we deny that, we are engaged in perhaps the worst kind of deception, namely self deception.

But when I read that passage, the minister said, that's not your problem, because you've just told me why you came here.

You came to tell me that you had a problem with sin.

Then he had me read the next verse.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And I finished reading that, and he said, what does that mean?

I said, well, I know what that means. I've read that a hundred times.

And he said, have you confessed your sin?

Yes. But I still feel guilty. He said, OK.

But he said, how about reading first John, one nine for me?

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