Today is Tuesday February 14th, 2012
The word of the day comes from my cousin, a strong woman of God...Minister Desiree Thomas
I am by no means a great chef. As a joke, my husband recently bought me a plaque from Home Goods for our kitchen that states: “Mom’s Kitchen- I only cook three things, take out, frozen, and microwave. I can make about 4 things in the kitchen that come out pretty good. One of those things is Spinach Lasagna. I usually can make this with my eyes closed, however one Sunday afternoon it came out totally wrong. It was soupy and gooey, and had no consistency to it. I thought maybe I added too much cheese, but then I thought about all the ingredients. Turns out I left out one important thing: tomato paste. The recipe calls for adding the paste to the sauce. Because I left it out, the lasagna had nothing to hold it together. Missing that one ingredient caused the entire dish to be soggy, - edible, but not the best lasagna as I had baked before.
This brings me to something that I believe is a missing ingredient in many Christian’s lives. That ingredient is forgiveness, and not necessarily forgiving others, but forgiving yourself.
The Bible doesn’t speak about the idea of “forgiving yourself”, but it does touch on forgiveness a lot! We are commanded to forgive others and that when we ask God to forgive us for our sins, that He will. This is based on the fact that Christ paid for our sins when he died on the cross for our sins.
John 1:9 tells us -if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Plain and simple, we must confess our wrongs and God will forgive. Simple enough right? But what about when we have done something and we have a hard time forgiving ourselves. Even though we are free from the bondage of sin, we still have these guilty feelings. We know that we need to accept the fact that we are forgiven in Christ, but sometimes we replay those actions over and over.
The Bible says that when God forgives, He remembers our sins no more.
Jeremiah 31:34-“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
God will not bring up our past! Not to us, or anyone else! Isn’t this awesome! Many times people will never let you forget your past, but Our Father will never treat us this way, he is not interested in making us feel awful for our sins. Once he has forgiven us, that’s it!
If you are dealing with not forgiving yourself- be reminded that you have a choice!
When our former sins come to mind, we can choose to dwell upon them (with the resulting guilty feelings), or we can choose to fill our minds with thoughts of the awesome God who forgave us and thank and praise Him for it. Remember Philippians 4:8 - Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
To be honest, over the past year this was an area where I struggled. Even though I knew that God forgave me and the person I hurt forgave me, I still didn’t forgive myself for my actions. I would be ok some days, and other days, guilt would overtake me again. As you can imagine, this “yo-yo” was overwhelming. Living like that is not the full life that God wants for us. I felt like “I was all over the place”, and had no consistency, just like that lasagna. I was kind of gooey. What was the missing ingredient? It was forgiving myself. You can’t move forward and be effective in ministry if you are holding on to unforgiveness. It’s like carrying around a 30 pound bag, all day and all night. That gets tiring right? Just like the lasagna was still edible, it wasn’t the best. You can be functional, but if you don’t let go of the past, you will not be your best!
Remember this and hold on to it (this is what helped me)- the next time you start to feel terrible about something that happened in the past that you truly asked God to forgive you of -change the channel. If you dwell on God’s mercy, I guarantee you it will help you to get over it. Remembering our sins is only beneficial when it reminds us of the extent of God’s forgiveness and makes it easier for us to forgive others. Yes, God may allow you to remember the past, but this is because he wants us to accept His forgiveness and rejoice in His awesome grace. Now that is a good place to praise Him!
Have a great day!
Tootie
Have a wonderful, blessed, productive, stress free day!
Have a wonderful, blessed, productive, stress free day!
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