So many people have spent so many years living with so much guilt that…well, we kind of get used to it. Easter? Forgiveness?  Healing? Not for me! Don’t bet on it!

One of the things that we all deal with is guilt, it comes in many different shapes and sizes but, it's guilt nevertheless. Sometimes it's called low self esteem other times it's a nagging sense that something is missing and for some people there's a deep regret about the past and if there’s one thing that we can't change in life, it's the past.

Guilt and the need for forgiveness is the place where psychology and theology often meet and believe it or not, that’s what Easter's about – dealing with guilt. So many people have spent so many years living with so much guilt that we kind of get used to it. "Easter – forgiveness, healing, freedom – not for me." Well, don't bet on it.

When God deals with our guilt, life becomes fresh and new and wondrous. When we're not carrying that baggage of guilt around inside us anymore when we've carried it around for so long, well it can be hard, really hard to believe that God needs to set us free.

This week on the program as we're heading into Easter we've been unpacking what God was thinking when He planned Easter. He created creation, he created you and me, He gave the whole "shoot and match" over to you and me, to use and to enjoy and He always knew that when He did that we'd rebel … and we have. We know that Adam and Eve did that and they fell out of relationship with God because the price of sin is separation from God – that's what the Bible calls death.

And we can get all intellectual about it, we can dismiss that as a fable but God is God and one day there will be a day of reckoning and the only thing that will be acceptable to God in us, is complete perfection because God is a perfect God and Easter is the time that we remember that we aren't. I'm not, you're not. And the perfection of Jesus was nailed to the cross to pay for our sin, our failures, you and me. He, who knew no sin became sin for us so that we could off-load all our sin and that He would pay for that on the cross through His death so that we can stand before God, blameless. He died our death. He paid our punishment.

Okay, that’s the head stuff, that's the knowledge. But we don't put our faith in Jesus just with our heads, we believe with our hearts but for so many people, for so long, they've felt this inadequacy of never measuring up, never being good enough, guilt. They cannot begin to imagine that Easter could ever be for them. You might say, "Berni, who are you talking to here? Are you talking about someone who believes in Jesus or someone who doesn't?" And the answer is to both, absolutely, to both because I know people that will tell you they believe in Jesus but they haven't dealt with this guilt thing.

Easter is such a huge thing to wrap our hearts around. It's such a huge leap of faith because we are so programmed to say, "If you do wrong you have to pay the price". But Easter says, "If you do wrong Jesus paid the price." And when we put our faith in what he did for us on the Cross we're set free from that guilt because God has forgiven us.

You and I, when we look in the mirror what do we see? All the blemishes and the wrinkles and the warts and everything, when we see ourselves in photos we think, "yuck", when we hear a recording of our voice we think, "yuck", when we see ourselves on video we want to be sick, God couldn't possibly ever accept me could he? This Easter thing couldn't ever possibly be for me could it? Did Jesus really die for me?

This week we haven't been spending a whole bunch of time on Easter on the program, we've been looking at a Psalm from the Old Testament, Psalm 139. And today I'm going to read the whole thing because Psalm 139 is God speaking to us.

Look very carefully at every word in every line, it's God’s words. He's speaking them directly into your heart and I pray that you'll hear three things from these words, that you'll hear how well He knows you, how He walks with you day by day even in the dark places and how lovingly and wondrously He created you. Have a look at this Psalm:

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you know my thoughts from far off. You discern my going out and my lying down; you're familiar with all of my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue you know it completely God.

You hem me in – behind me, before me, you've laid your hands upon me. God, such knowledge is just too wonderful for me, too lofty to attain. Where can I flee from your spirit? If I go up into the heavens you're there, if I make my bed in the depths of hell you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the farthest side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light will become night around me,’ God even the darkness will not be dark to you because the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. Because you created my inner most being. You God, knit me together in my mother’s womb, I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

God, your works are so wonderful, I know that full well. My frame wasn't hidden from you when I was being made in that secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. God, your eyes saw my unformed body, all the days set apart for me were written in your book before even one of them came into being. How precious to me are your thoughts O God. How vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them they would outnumber the grains of sand on the beach and when I wake, I am still with you.

It's just such a beautiful Psalm, God loves us so much. I don't know how to say it any other way but when God looks at you He looks at someone who He has handcrafted, perfectly and wondrously and beautifully and God’s heart beats for you.

Next week on the program, we'll talk more about Easter itself but what this Psalm is about, it's like a doorway that opens up God’s heart to us. He wants us to be blown away by the incredible message of His love that's so huge and so faithful and so complete. That was what was in His heart when He dreamt up Easter. He wants us to see his Son hanging on that Cross, dying and suffering, to pay the price for our sin.

That's what Easters about and it's for you and for me. I truly believe that God is reaching out to each one of us today, to you and to me and saying this, "Yes. Yes Easter is for you. I came to set you free, I came to die for you, my Son suffered for you because I love you so much, so passionately, so completely, so eternally. You my child are to die for.”