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,