Hi, I'm Robert Jeffress and I'm glad to serve as your Bible teacher every day on this great radio station on today's edition of Pathway to Victory.

We have a choice of how we handle our guilt. We can try to cover it. We can run away from it. We can blame others for it. We can rationalize it or we can discover the freedom that comes from God's forgiveness.

David says when you have received God's forgiveness, if you have received God's forgiveness, you will repent of your sin. You will repent of your sin.

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. A famous Christian psychiatrist once said, the reason most people feel guilty is because they are guilty.

Trying to be a good person, it's simply not good enough to please God. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress shows us how to conquer the mountain of guilt that separates us from fellowship with God.

Now here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message. Dr. Jeffress?

Thanks David and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. By now I hope you've heard about the exciting new resource at Pathway to Victory. As a father and now grandfather, my heart has grown heavy for the next generation, especially for those young Christians who feel voiceless in these days of unbridled tolerance.

Well, my daughter speaks with passion and conviction about her Christian faith and she's become an encouragement to so many listeners through a podcast, radio program and television program called Unapologetic.

Whether for yourself or the millennial in your life, I want you to benefit from this exciting new program. Again, it's called Unapologetic and finding the podcast as simple when you go to ptv.org slash julia.

And now let me give you a preview of our topic today. The longer I rub shoulders with other Christians, the more I've come to realize that a lot of believers are privately dealing with a heavy burden of guilt. They're overcome with remorse and shame.

Today, I want to show you how to move from guilt to a far better place. And in addition to this program, I've included this topic in a best-selling book I've written for you. It's called Invincible. And right now you're invited to request a hard-bound copy of Invincible when you give a generous gift to support the growing ministry of Pathway to Victory.

In my book, I talk about overcoming guilt and nine other roadblocks in life. I'll say more about my book later in the program. But right now, let's give our complete attention to the subject at hand from the Invincible series I titled today's message moving from guilt to repentance.

We've got one of three choices and how we're going to handle guilt. One is silence that is trying to ignore it or cover over it. Secondly is sorrow. We can feel really bad about our sin. We can be sorry for the sin. We can be sorry. We got caught. We can be sorry for the terrible consequences.

But that's not repentance. That's the third choice. The third and only lasting solution to guilt is repentance. A word that means to have a change of mind that leads to a change of direction. We're going to look at one man in Scripture who illustrates all three of those responses. First silence, then sorrow, and finally life-giving repentance. His name was King David.

Today, we're going to talk about conquering the mountain of guilt by moving from guilt to repentance. And that's what Psalm 51 is all about. Turn over to Psalm 51 because if you look at the superscription above the Psalm, it says a psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone into that Shiba.

Now, I want you to notice in this Psalm the four steps that David exercised to move from guilt to repentance. First of all, today, if you are feeling guilty, if you feel separated from God and others because of your sin, first of all, acknowledge your sin as sinful.

Notice what he says in verses one and three. Be gracious to me, oh God, according to your loving kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion, blot out my transgressions for I know my transgressions of my sin is ever before me. David doesn't say, oh, I've got a slight flaw. I've got an addiction. I've got a little problem I need to take care of.

He acknowledged his behavior is truly sinful. In fact, I wish we had time to look at this. There are five words in Psalm 51, five different words he uses to describe his sin. He calls them transgressions in verses one and three. That talks about the moral gravity of sin. Secondly, iniquity, it's a word that refers to the perversity of sin.

The third word is sin itself that comes from a word that means to miss the mark. Fourth, he calls it evil. What he did, he said, was evil. That shows how God views his transgression. And finally, he used the word blood, guiltiness. He was confessing to murder by using that term.

He acknowledged your sin as truly sinful behavior. Secondly, David illustrates the importance of accepting responsibility for your sin. Notice in verse two, the use of the personal pronoun, wash me thoroughly for my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Notice it's me, me, me, my, my, my. He doesn't blame that sheba for bathing naked on the rooftop. That wasn't the cause of his sin. He doesn't blame his parents. He doesn't blame the pressures of being the king of Israel. He doesn't blame anything or anyone except himself.

And you'll never find the pathway to repentance until you're willing to acknowledge your sin as your responsibility. Now, you may be saying, well, pastor, I'm happy to acknowledge my sin. If I could just think of a sin, I committed.

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