Welcome to the 6th day of the A-Z blogging challenge. If you’re just joining us, feel free to play catch up on all the posts missed. 🙂
Today’s letter is F and I was so tempted to write on food but oh well, other things are more needful.
I had messed up. I knew it, God knew it. I hated myself for it. Come on! At this point how can you still be making such silly mistakes? How can you fall when you’re supposed to be grown in the faith? I posed those questions and many more at myself. I was angry with myself. I had allowed my flesh rule me- whatever happened to living by the Spirit?
After a while, I finally went to go to God in prayers. Laying aside my self-righteous acts and seeking His forgiveness. Unsure He had forgiven me, I kept repeating the prayer all through the day. Finally He answered;
I have forgiven you, forgive yourself.
That led me to a long banter about how my ‘self’ didn’t deserve my forgiveness. I mean, there are times you do wrong and feel like you deserve a punishment. Grace doesn’t feel ‘good enough’. It’s not enough to say ‘go, your sins have been forgiven’. There should be something more! Something that will make me writhe in pain. So if God won’t punish my flesh for disappointing, I’ll do it myself. I’ll hurt myself by hating it or for some others, by inflicting physical pain. I may just be the only one who thinks this way at times.
Truth is, grace is always sufficient! God loves us so much. He sent His only son to suffer some gruesome death, for what? So we keep nurturing guilt after confessing our sins? So we hide away because we feel our sins are ‘too much’ for God to handle? So we hate our bodies and everything about it that disappoints us? Hell no!
Jesus could have just been shot! -Dunno if they had guns then– but you get my drift; they could have just stabbed him with the sword to kill him at once. Why the cross? Why the crucifixion? Why the slow death? So you see the gravity of it all! Grace was birthed from bloodshed. Grace was bought by the blood Jesus shed on that hefty wooden cross. Grace is freely given but is not cheap. So please, never for once treat it as a cheap commodity! Now that’s a topic for another day.
Some of us are still in bondage because we haven’t forgiven ourselves for unpleasant situations we believe we could have averted somehow. But God doesn’t hold it against us. He forgives us when we ask for forgiveness and He expects us to do same to ourselves.
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. -Isaiah 1:18
His desire is for us to be free indeed! Forgive yourself for the child that got wayward. Forgive yourself for the hurt you allowed. Forgive your body for the abuse it went through. Forgive yourself for the bad things you did… Let it all go! Embrace His finished work on the cross and His unending love for you.
It’s always my desire that you live victorious lives
Lots of love,
Dainty M. 
It’s just the devil telling us we aren’t worthy of being forgiven
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True. Unfortunately a lot of us fall victims to his ploy.
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Very insightful post.
The truth we all have one time or the other have got through all those things you alighted. We just felt there should be some form of punishment when we derail from walking in faith in our walk with God.
Especially when we keep falling into habits that we have confessed over and over to God.
Some of those times I could hear God “son, what sins are you talking about?” I got confuse, then I try to remind him of what I’m asking forgiveness about. Then I seem to hear this scripture in my spirit – “I am He that blot out your transgression and remember them no more”. Gods forgives covers both transgression and sins
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Thanks for pointing that scripture out. It’s good to know you could relate to this. Thanks for the encouragement.
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Inspirational as always. Many of us r guilty of dis offence most especially if it were to be an addiction one had overcome. Its also a tool of d enemy to make us always see ourselves as being unworthy of God’s mercy. Thanks for revealing God’s unending grace and mercy, more so, that shld learn to forgive ourselves and not to continue dwelling in sin. May God Almighty continue to increase u in wisdom, strength and in every area of ur life.
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Amen! So true! The devil tries to make us see ourselves as unworthy. Thanks for the comment Demola!
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This is a very big one M and a very touching insight on it as it concerns our lives as sons and daughters of God but even as much as I like to comment, I would like to relate with it from personal experience. Thank God that He made a route his children shall take when they stumble. I have come to realise that not all of our forgiveness prayers are really forgiven cos when we pray, we pray it casually without feeling the remorse of what we had done and who we have offended. We just pray for praying sake like “MAKE I PRAY MAKE E NO BE LIKE SAY I NO PRAY” quite a thought there but whose prayer will GOD answer? Psalm 51:17 says, “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” David had done a grievous sin to man and unto God. The adjective contrite states the kind of prayer HE answers but I tell you this is not evident in some of our or my prayer. verse 16 of that chapter tells us another activities we tend to involve in when we have erred. God isn’t interested in those neither.
Another side to it from personal experience is when I offend some one that is very close to me. do I know what will be going through the mind of that person ” O my very good friend I can’t believe he did this thing to me upon all the trust, secret I shared with him, he still went back to betray me” just creating a picture here. If I’m to get back the trust I’ve lost then I will need to go the extra mile. Peter had same experience after he betrayed Jesus Christ. The Bible said he hid himself from the rest, wept bitterly because of what he had done and to WHO he had done it to “And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out, and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:61, 62).Peter withdrew himself cos he has offended a close friend that trusted him with all he owns, his secret. what was going through Peters mind is how he his going to cement the crack that he has made. There are most seasons in our lives when we are very close to God that we even here HIM speaking to us as if we are sitting in a dinning table, we enjoy HIS fellowship but just a little sin from us breaks that connection. Then the battle begins of how do I come back to that relationship I had with HIM, Can I still feel his presence as I used to? This and many more I sure were some of the things on Peters mind so it is when we offend a close friend. the Bible didn’t state how long Peter withdrew himself from the brethren but here is the beauty Christ previously said to him: “When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren” (Luke 22:32). But this is not the case we find ourselves. instead of coming back more refreshed, strengthened. When we have been redeemed back fully, HE expects that the communion we once had will become strong but on the contrary it is not. we find ourselves coming back to ask for the same forgiveness he once forgave us of. coming and coming and coming back.
God Help Us All. Amen
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Wow! As always, you bring a new dimension and insight to the post. Thank you so much for this. Indeed, there is need to abide in God’s love after repentance other than going and coming back again to seek forgiveness on the same sin. His grace is sufficient to help us all abide. Thanks Mike for this! God bless you!
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