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Serita Jakes carried a crushing guilt for years, and she says no person on earth could talk her out of it. She says most Christian women are carrying the same thing, and looking for relief in all the wrong places. Serita Jakes is the First Lady of one of the largest churches in America, married to Bishop T.D. Jakes for over forty years. And she has survived more loss than almost anyone you'll ever hear from. A car accident early in her marriage that doctors said she'd never walk from. She walked. She buried both her mothers. She sat by her husband's side through a heart attack that nearly took him on a stage in front of thousands. So when she talks about pain, she's not guessing. She's lived in it. But she said the loss that nearly destroyed her wasn't the worst loss. It was the guilt that came with one of them. Her mother got sick and was gone within a week, while Serita was out of town. And afterward, people told her, your mother kept asking for you. If Serita were here. If Serita were here. She had to be the one to sign the papers. She slid down onto the floor. And then came the part she says lasted for years. "There was so much guilt for me for years. For years and years, I wrestled with not being here for her when she needed me the most." Self-hate. Loathing. Turmoil. Over something she could not have controlled. And then she said the line that splits the whole thing open. She said grief brings consolation if there's no guilt attached to it. The grief, she could survive. The guilt is what wrecked her. Because grief, people come and sit with you. They bring food. They say the right things. But guilt, she said this herself, "nobody could reassure me. Nobody could console me." Because I was that woman. I want to tell you about a specific night. I was lying in bed replaying a conversation I'd had a hundred times in my head. A thing I said. A thing I didn't do. A moment I was sure I'd failed someone, and they were gone now, and I could never fix it. My friends had all said the things. It wasn't your fault. You did everything you could. You couldn't have known. And every single time, I'd nod, and say thank you, and feel absolutely nothing shift. Because the verdict against me lived somewhere their words couldn't reach. I lay there carrying a sentence no person had ever been able to lift off me. For years. And here's the part underneath it. I'd been a Christian the whole time. I went to church. I knew my verses. I was the one other people called the strong one. I'd even heard people say "God forgives you." I'd nodded at that too. But it was just words to me. A line on a wall. Something I knew about, the way I knew a lot of things about God, in scattered pieces that never reached the part of me that was actually drowning. I had never once sat down and truly known the God those words were about. So when I needed his voice to be louder than the verdict in my own head, I didn't have it. I only had the sentence I'd given myself, and a Bible I'd never really read, sitting on a shelf with the answer in it the whole time. That's the one thing Serita can't hand you from a stage. She can tell you her own guilt finally lifted. She can't reach into you and lift yours. And no friend can either. She'd be the first to tell you that. Only actually knowing God, the whole of him, in his own words, can do that. That's what changed everything for me. A 52-week guided study that walks you through the entire Bible, one week at a time, from Genesis to Revelation. Where you finally hear, in his own words, the thing no friend's reassurance could ever give you. Before each week, it tells you exactly what you're walking into. Who wrote it. When. Why. What was happening at the time. And underneath all of it, the one verdict big enough to overrule the one you've been carrying. The Psalms: a God who says he removes our wrongs from us as far as the east is from the west. The thing you've held against yourself for years, sent that far away. Romans: where it says plainly there is now no condemnation. Not "less." None. For the woman who's been sentencing herself every night. The Gospels: a Jesus who looked at the people everyone else had written off, the failures, the ones sure they were beyond saving, and told them, to their face, that they were forgiven. For the first time in my life, the words weren't just words. I wasn't reading about forgiveness. I was finally hearing God say it, loud enough to drown out the voice that had been sentencing me for years. Verses I'd read a hundred times suddenly meant something, because I finally understood what they were saying. I'd open it in the morning and not want to close it. And slowly, the guilt lost its grip. I started to believe, all the way down, the thing Serita finally believed about herself. "You did all that you could." And to the woman lying awake, carrying a verdict no friend has ever been able to lift, hear this. The relief you've been looking for in people was never going to come from people. It only comes from the One whose word is bigger than yours. You just have to finally go and know him. Right now it's up to 62% off, and every order comes with a free pen pack. Don't spend another year carrying a sentence God already lifted. Don't spend another year reading nothing, when the words that free you were there the whole time. You did all you could. Tap below and grab yours before they sell out.