Guilt keeps us heavy and immobile when God needs us to be light and agile in fulfilling our purpose. Walking in the Spirit means living by God’s higher expectations, not human ones.
• Personal story about carrying guilt after a family conflict following father’s terminal diagnosis
• Privately forgiving wasn’t enough—the Holy Spirit guided toward active reconciliation
• Apologizing isn’t about getting forgiveness but about honoring God first
• Taking this step despite having many people supporting my position
• When finding identity in Christ, ego must die to make room for spiritual guidance
• True freedom comes when we acknowledge our mistakes and take responsibility
• We are more than our mistakes when we allow God to guide us to our “light of lights”
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Transcript:
Speaker 1:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, sylvia Worsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, sylvia Worsham.
Speaker 2:
Hey, lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Worsham. Welcome to Released Out Revealed Purpose. In this episode. We’re going to be talking about how we are more than our mistakes and we’re going to be addressing guilt and shame. Now, per definition, for the things that I’ve been learning the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 2:
During the cognitive behavioral therapy coaching I’m receiving by Salome Scaf, who’s doing the training for Gateway North Life Coaches, I learned a lot about guilt. Guilt is something I’ve carried in years past, especially after my divorce with my son. I carried it extensively, especially after my divorce with my son. I carried it extensively. But I think, as human beings, when we make mistakes and we feel bad because of the action we took, when in direct contradiction to our values, that’s when we feel guilty, and I know that that has been my case. In several of the scenarios I’ve carried guilt. But God doesn’t want you to carry guilt, because guilt keeps you heavy and not as light and on your feet as he needs you to be when you are fulfilling the purpose that he created you for.
Speaker 2:
So for the purposes of this story, I’m going to keep it without too much detail because it involves other family members in my direct family that I like to keep private, but I’ll give you the gist of what happened. So in August of 2023, as most of you know, I’ve discussed in previous episodes we received what I termed to be the terminal diagnosis from my dad. I had flown down to the Rio Grande Valley and I’d been in the hospital with them when they basically said, hey, there’s nothing more we can do, you’re bringing tumors back, and daddy already had dementia, and so he kind of understood what was happening, but he really didn’t, and there’s just a lot of stress and tension. And during those days and something happened between myself and a family member while I was there that caused a lot of guilt and shame for me and for various members of the family and for months up until December of 2023, when we knew it was going to be Daddy’s last Christmas I felt a lot of pressure from my family to make the peace, because I’m the oldest and I am to make the peace and that was the role they had always counted on.
Speaker 2:
But in this case, I had a lot of people that were on my side that said no, this individual needs to actually make the first move. They need to be the ones to ask for forgiveness of what they have done and I so I felt justified in not moving forward. Now, what I did privately was I had forgiven this individual and I had prayed for this individual. But it’s not enough, and here’s why and this is where I want you to understand why we are more than our mistakes, because when we walk, we have spirit inside of us and we walk with the spirit and we allow spirit to guide us and who I mean is the Holy Spirit, then we really need to live by the expectation he sets out, and His expectations are a lot higher than human expectations.
Speaker 2:
And I remember my soul not feeling in congruency with not asking for forgiveness for my role and not taking ownership for my role in that altercation. But I allowed my ego, my fear-based beliefs and fear-based feelings to kind of drive me to not move forward in asking for forgiveness for several months. In November of 2023, I made a commitment to start to find my identity in Christ, and when you do that, when you make that commitment, you need to start living by God’s expectations, and that’s going to stretch you out of your comfort zone and it did. It completely stretched me out of my comfort zone because now my soul was guiding me and now it was allowing the Holy Spirit to truly guide me. If you look at Galatians 5, you’ll see that when you walk in spirit, you need to allow the Holy Spirit to guide you, and he was, and he was guiding me through my soul’s desires of making amends with this individual and I prayed a lot about it from like November and on.
Speaker 2:
In January, our maternal aunt passed away and it was again a lot of. It was a very stressful time. Mom was not feeling great. This was her baby sister who had passed away. My dad was terminal.
Speaker 2:
It was a really stressful time for our family and all of us flew to be by my cousin’s side because they had now lost their mother, their second parent. So now they really needed us to be there, and so we, each of us, flew out there to be with them. And this other individual didn’t want to walk into the space where I was at and it was causing an enormous amount of tension for us to be in the same room. And that’s when I felt the Holy Spirit guide me and say it’s time you have got to make amends and see. Days before I flew to Mexico, I had spoken to a good buddy of mine, jason Black, who happens to be our financial advisor, but he’s also a very good friend and a man of God, and I had discussed the situation with him and the very first question that he asked me was does this individual have anything against you?
Speaker 1:
And.
Speaker 2:
I said, yes, he goes well. It’s great that you’ve forgiven this individual and you’ve prayed for them, but it’s not enough If you are truly finding your identity in Christ. He told me you’ve got to repent and you’ve got to ask for forgiveness. Now, this person may or may not forgive you, and that’s okay, because that’s not why you’re doing it. Why you’re doing it is for God, because when you ask, made the choices that you made during that argument, you dishonored and disrespected God first, and so you’re really apologizing to him for what you did by apologizing to this individual. And so I felt the Holy Spirit guiding me during my maternal aunt’s rosary, like that whole time. He was guiding me towards this person who was sitting outside of like, where the wake was right, and our mother was there and I remember walking up, bowing my head in humility and saying I’m sorry for my role in our fight, and this person’s jaw, like, hit the floor.
Speaker 2:
A lot of people were shocked because they had sided with me. They had heard both sides and they had sided with me and this other person had tried to get a ton of family members on their side and everybody was against this person because of the role they had played in the fight, but I was doing it for God. And I was asked later by mom, like why did you do it? Did you do it for me? And I said no, I did it. It for God, because I dishonored him, I disobeyed him and, if I’m truly honest, I felt ashamed throughout it all. I knew that I had made a mistake but for a long time was unwilling to admit my mistake. I felt justified because I had a lot of people telling me I was right. But when we live by God’s standards, ego has no place in that. It’s very true what he says about if you’re going to follow me, christ, you need to die first, and what he means by that is you need to die to your old life, the way you’re used to doing things. You need to die to that to follow me if you’re going to follow me and I was serious about following him.
Speaker 2:
So I knew that what I needed to do was ask for forgiveness. I didn’t really care, and it’s not important that the other person forgives you. What is important is that you ask forgiveness from God to this other individual because they are a child of God and you’ve dishonored your parent by your heavenly father by attacking this person verbally or whatever, and that’s what I had done. So we are definitely more than our mistakes, and when we turn to God and we ask him to guide us, he will guide us and he’ll guide us to our light of lights. And that’s why I call you guys, the Lightbringers, because you have the light inside of you, you have the Holy Spirit inside of you and he is longing to be close to you, longing to have an immaculate and a beautiful relationship with you. But it’s up to you if you want to invite him into your life. I’m Sylvia Warsham. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week’s episode of we Are More Than Our Mistakes, addressing Guilt and Shame. Have a wonderful week, stay safe. Love you all.
Speaker 1:
Bye now, so that’s it for today’s episode of Release Doubt Reveal Purpose. Head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a $25,000 private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to ReleasedOutRevealPurposePodcastcom and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.