Celebrate Recovery Choice 4

Hyunjin Lee
Nov 17, 2025
3 min read

✨ CHOICE 4: Openly Examine and Confess My Faults

“Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust.”

A pure heart is a free heart—a heart no longer weighed down by guilt, shame, or the secrets we’ve tried to hide. Purity isn’t perfection. It’s honesty. It’s courage. It’s the willingness to stop running from our past and finally bring everything into the light.

Choice 4 is where true freedom begins.

⭐ What Guilt Does to Us

Guilt slowly destroys us from the inside out:

Guilt destroys confidence. You can’t feel secure when you’re always afraid someone will discover the truth.
Guilt damages relationships. Unresolved guilt shows up as anger, withdrawal, impatience, or defensiveness.
Guilt keeps us trapped in the past. It replays the same scenes again and again, stealing our peace and joy today.

Guilt never changes the past—it only poisons the present.

Choice 4 helps us bring our painful past into the open, let God cleanse it, and finally move forward.

⭐ 1. Take a Personal Moral Inventory

Think of this like cleaning out a closet. You find things you forgot, lost, ignored, or avoided—some beautiful, some painful.

Use the MORAL acrostic to guide you:

M — Make time

O — Open your heart and mind

R — Rely on God’s grace

A — Analyze your past honestly

L — List both the good and the bad

God reveals the truth gently. Your story is no longer a secret, and healing can begin.

⭐ 2. Accept Responsibility for Your Faults

Freedom requires radical honesty:

Be honest — stop pretending, stop running.
Don’t rationalize — “everyone does it” is not healing.
Don’t blame others — your part is your responsibility.
Don’t deceive yourself — acknowledge where you messed up.

Special note: If you were abused physically or sexually, you write “NOT GUILTY.”You were not responsible for the harm done to you.

⭐ 3. Ask God for Forgiveness

Forgiveness is not about begging, bargaining, or bribing. Just believe His promise:

He forgives instantly
He forgives freely
He forgives completely

⭐ 4. Admit Your Faults to Another Person

“Confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”

Healing requires connection. Secrets keep us sick; honesty sets us free.

Choose someone:

Safe
Mature
Compassionate
Not a gossip
Spiritually grounded

Sharing your most painful secret often becomes the moment of your greatest freedom.

⭐ 5. Accept God’s Forgiveness — and Forgive Yourself

We all have hurts, hang-ups, and habits. God has already forgiven you; now it’s time to receive it. You’re not meant to carry the shame anymore.

✨ Action Steps

Action 1: Pray About It

(Your prayer stays exactly as written — it’s beautiful, powerful, and stays in your website version.)

Action 2: Write About It — Your Moral Inventory

Use these columns:

Person: Write the name of the person (or group, or situation) connected to your hurt, fear, resentment, or memory.
Cause: Write specifically what happened — the action, behavior, or event that hurt you.
Effect: Explain how that action affected your life emotionally, mentally, spiritually, or relationally.
Damage: Identify which basic needs were harmed:
- Social (relationships, trust)
- Security (safety, finances, stability)
- Sexual (intimacy, identity, boundaries)
Which area of your life was damaged by this?
My Part: Write your honest part in the situation — if you had one. Did I contribute in any way?
If you were abused (especially as a child), write: NONE / NOT GUILTY.
Because the abuse was not your fault — ever.
Good Fruits + What Jesus Would Say: End with the hope in your story.
What good has God brought out of this? What truth would Jesus speak over you?