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Steve Brown: Hey, go back to the source. You’ll be glad you did. Let’s talk on Key Life.

Matthew: That was author and seminary professor Steve Brown, and this is Key Life, where we’re all about radical grace. Because of what Jesus has done, God’s not mad at you. Keep listening and that message will set you free to live a life of joy and surprising faithfulness.

Steve Brown: Thanks, Matthew. We’re starting a new series on guilt, shame, fear, and regret, and some of the false narratives that I—and you too—have believed about the Christian faith. Very simply, the Christian faith is supposed to be good news. When it’s not good news, something’s wrong.

I hope the series that we’re going to do over the next few weeks will be helpful. If it is helpful, it will be because we’ll be dealing with the sources of the problems, the false narratives, and 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.

Behind that crash, there might be the pilot’s struggle with booze, mistakes made by the pilot or in the control tower, issues with the airplane’s design, a lack of upkeep, or bad weather. Just so, there are causative factors behind our guilt and shame and fear and regret.

In the first of this series, we’re going to talk about the nature of lies. In the following chapters, or 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. 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!" I’m not so sure he was right. I’ve prayed plenty of scared prayers, and on occasion, they were quite effective.

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. This series is about that preparation. Our problems are guilt, shame, fear, and regret. While 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—of violating a standard: one’s own standards, God’s standards, or standards imposed by others. Guilt is often reflected in our sleepless nights, our hidden secrets, or 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. 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. 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. It read, "Flee! 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 hurt, 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 V8" to "I married the wrong person." The big ones have to do with how our lives would have been so different if only we had made the right decision, done the 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.

A friend of mine said, "Nobody turns that down," and I said, "I will." I turned it down twice. I figured that when they asked me the third time, I would then graciously accept their offer. They didn't ask the third time. 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 that are simply not fixable. Guilt, shame, fear, and regret overlap, 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. 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. We’re going to find out why as we go through this long series on fear, shame, guilt, and regret. That sounds so bad, but it’s really not. Because along with looking at those demons, we’re going to look at the good news the Bible gives us regarding each. It does. You think about that. I’m in.

Matthew: 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.

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 *Untame 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 percent 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-KEY-LIFE. That’s 1-800-539-5433. You could also email Steve at steve@keylife.org to ask for that CD. Or if you want to mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses for the US and Canada. Again, just ask for the free CD featuring Chad Bird.

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