When you are prone to be guilt, the devil has a field day. I guarantee you that he will definitely take advantage of you by working through others to play on your guilt. They may make you feel that they’ll suffer greatly if you don’t do as they ask our response must be to follow your own intuition from God and not take responsiblity for their joy. You may have elderly parents who will make you feel guilty if you don’t cater to their every whim. We do have a biblical duty to our parents to be sure they are taken care of in their old age, but we can not be responsible for their joy. Many of the things people expect are their expectations, and they can be quite unrealistic. They may be thinking only of themselves without having any understanding of you and your other responsibilities.
The sense of guilt is so awful that we usually will do anything to alleviate it. If we allow others to make us feel guilty, then soon learn how to manipulate us by using our weakness to get what whey want. You must understand that you are not obligated to do a thing just because someone else wants you to or thinks that you should. This does not mean we don’t want to please people and do what is for their benefit, but we cannot let their disires rule us.
Guilt can be from a real or imagined misdeed. I felt guilty about the abuse in my childhood even though I was not the perpetrator and hated what was being done to me. That guilt developed into what I call an addictive guilt. I just felt guilty all the time over nothing in particular as well as mistakes I did make. I had a false sense of guilt that was rooted in shame.
Emotions have a mind of their own, and Satan uses them to deceive us. We cannot assume because we feel a certain way that those feelings are telling us the truth. In other words, just because I feel guilty does not mean I am guilty. Likewise, I may not feeling guilty and yet I have committed sin. I may have reasoned in my mind that what I did was justifiable even though it was against God’s Word, and by doing so I deceived myself. The apostole Paul said that he didn’t feel anything against himself, but that he was not justified by his feelings. He left enverything to God and expected that God would convict him of sin when needed : “I am not conscious of anything against myself, and I feel blameless; but I am not vindicated and acquitted before God on that account. It is the Lord (Himself) Who examines and judges me” (1 Cor. 4:4)
Men who batter their wives make them feel as if the battering is their fault. The women who allow such treatment have little or no self-worth. They feel that if the marriage fails it will be their fault, and many of them actually believe they must deserve the treatment they get. I have heared that 7 percent of all women are physically abused, and 37% are verbally or emotionally abused. That means there are a lot of women who feel guilty and have no self-esteem.
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