Go back to the source. You’ll be glad you did.

Hey, go back to the source. You'll be glad you did. Let's talk on key life.

That was author and seminary professor Steve Brown and this is key life. We're all about

radical grace. Because of what Jesus has done, it's not mad at you. Keep listening and

that message will set you free to live a life of joy and surprising faithfulness.

Thanks, Matthew. We're starting a new series on guilt, shame and fear and regret and some of

the false narratives that I and you two have believed about the Christian faith. Very simply,

the Christian faith is supposed to be good news and when it's not good news, something's wrong.

And so I hope the series that we're going to do over the next few weeks will be helpful.

And if it is helpful, it will be because we'll be dealing with the sources of the problems,

the false narratives, the lies we believe and live by more than the actual problems themselves.

If a pilot, for instance, crashes an airplane, the problem is the crash itself.

But behind that crash there might be the pilot struggle with booze. Mistakes made by the pilot

are in the control tower. Issues with the airplanes design may be a lack of a keep or bad weather,

just so they're causative factors behind our guilt and shame and fear and regret.

So in the first of this series, we're going to talk about the nature of lives.

And then in the following chapters, we're going to are the following episodes of this broadcast.

We're going to talk about particular lies and narratives, just as pilots and control tower

personnel should stay sober. Designers and mechanics should be better trained.

And meteorologists predict the weather more accurately, believers should be aware of the sources

of guilt and shame and fear and regret and find ways to handle those.

That way is, are you listening, always the truth. And the one place where there is always truth

is the scripture, revealed propositional truth through story and poetry and wisdom and narratives.

Unaware Christians are dangerous to themselves and others. I know because I've been there

and I've done that. There's a story about a farmer and his son on a field when a tornado

began moving in their direction. As the farmer ran for the house he looked back and his son was on

his knees praying. The farmer shouted, run son, a scared prayer ain't worth nothing.

Well, I'm not so sure he was right. I've prayed plenty of scared prayers, and on occasion

they were quite effective. But we can run faster if we are as it were prayed up.

Just so guilt and shame, fear and regret are better handled with preparation. And this series is

about that preparation. Our problems are guilt, shame, fear and regret. All for the most part,

I'm going to deal with those issues in an indirect way. Some definitions are in order.

Guilt, by the way, is the reality, this is true guilt, or perceived reality, false guilt,

a violating a standard, one's own standards. God's standards, standards imposed by others,

and guilt is often reflected in our sleepless nights. Our hidden secrets are even within

a facade of self-righteousness and goodness and purity and spirituality. I once had a conversation

with a young woman whose life was destroyed by unwise and sinful decisions, and it was left in

shambles. She began to cry. She reached into her purse and pulled out a photograph and handed it

to me. You know what it was? It was a photograph of a cute and beautiful little girl.

Through her tears she said, that's me. Sometimes I look at that picture and ask myself,

my God, what have I done to that little girl? While guilt is about what we've done or not done,

shame is about who we are. More often than not shame is a relational issue, involving what others

think of us and as a result what we think of ourselves. I have a friend who is beautiful and bright

and fun and yet she really thinks she's ugly and dumb and boring. She was abused and shamed as a

child and that shame became her personal definition. Fear is the legitimate reaction to danger.

Fear is also the awareness that our secrets could be revealed. Our failures could be made public

and our sins have a price tag with a bill that could come soon. And then there is God and His judgment

where we will ultimately we think, get what we deserve. Someone tells a story probably

apocryphal. About the time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes books,

sent a telegram to a bunch of his friends. You know what it read? Flea,

everything has been discovered. The next day he found out that every one of his friends had fled

the country. Regret is reflected in things like I should have. I can't believe I did that.

And how could I? Thoughts about where we've gone, what we've done, who we've heard, and what we've

said. It includes the wish that we could go back to a place where we took the wrong road

and take the right one instead. The problem with regret is that we often can't go back

and fix the blunder. Regrets run the gamut of I could have had a VA too. I married the wrong person.

The big ones have to do with our lives would have been so different if only we had made the right

decision done a right thing or had the right perspective. I was once offered the pastorate

of a very large and prominent church. Out of pride I turned it down. Friend of mine said nobody

turns that down. And I said, I will. And I turned it down twice. And I figured that when they

asked me the third time, I would then graciously accept their offer. They didn't ask the third time.

And you know something, every time I went through difficult situations in the subsequent churches,

I served my mind, went back to that church where I could have been the pastor.

When one has lived as long as I have, there are a whole lot of regrets. Regrets that are

simply not fixable. Guild, shame, fear, and regret. Overlapped and they are related.

If we struggle with one of those, as I mentioned, most of us do, we probably, to one degree or another,

struggle with all of them. If you don't struggle, you might want to turn off the radio right now.

And if you struggle and admit it on the other hand, over the next few weeks, I have such good news for

you. It isn't about how to become some kind of super saint and live a life of happiness.

It's good news that God made us the way we are and that He doesn't make junk.

The trick is to find out why we think God created junk in the first place.

And we're going to find out why as we go through this long series on fear, shame, and guilt and regret.

That sounds so bad, but it's really not. Because along with looking at those dinners,

we're going to look at the good news that Bible gives us regarding each other. It does.

You think about that, amen.

That was Steve Brown teaching us about how to deal with fear, guilt, shame, and regret.

It's a brand new series. So if you're just joining us, your timing is perfect. More tomorrow,

we'll save a place for you. So when you think of prayer, do you think of something that's

pretty and proper? If so, you may want to think again. And that's what Chad Bird says. We recently

spoke with him on our talk radio show Steve Brown, etc. Chad's new book is called Untamed

Prayers 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms. If you ever struggle with prayer or

with feeling like you can't be 100% honest with God, you need to hear this conversation. And we'll

send it to you on CD for free. Just call us right now at 1-800-Keylife. That's 1-800-539-543-3. You

can also email Steve at keylife.org to ask for that CD. Or if you want to mail your request,

go to keylife.org slash contact to find our mailing addresses for the US and Canada. Again,

just ask for the free CD featuring Chad Bird. Finally, would you partner in the work of keylife

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