FORGIVING YOURSELF
”For if you forgive people their trespasses [their reckless and willful sins, leaving them, letting them go, and giving up resentment], your heavenly Father will also forgive you.“
We have often looked at this scripture as concerning others but today I want to invite you into a different aspect of it that many don’t always think of.
There are instances in one’s lifetime that you can make such a tremendous mistake that it feels remotely and closely impossible to forgive yourself. Perhaps you are serving a jail sentence for taking someone’s life, maybe you confessed Christ and fell short of his sexual purity standards before marriage, perhaps you have terminated the life of an unborn child and today you are born again and realize it is contrary to the commands of the God you serve, perhaps you have violated a child and put a stain on their life that will never leave them.
The list could be endless of those seemingly unpardonable sins not just to the victim but the one that commits them. Our theme scripture speaks of forgiving people, and in the pool of people you too are counted in the number.
Romans 8:1 says there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If truly you are in Christ but have not ascended to the understanding that because God has forgiven you, not hell, not heaven, not the church, not the saints and NOT EVEN YOU can hold condemnation over your head, you are not yet free.
If heaven declares you forgiven, you truly are forgiven. Because man is a co-creator with God, and what you bind on earth is so in heaven and what you loose on earth is so in heaven (Matthew 18:18), maintaining a condemnation against yourself is a trespass. You breach the spirit in you, by assuming a self- righteous position yet our righteousness can only be a gift of God.
Today brothers and sisters, if there be any of your mistakes or past sins that you have not let go of and truly forgiven yourself of, this is the day of your deliverance. The good news is, not even you have the permission to hold against yourself what God has not held against you.
Acts 17:30 assures us that God literally closed His eyes at our days of ignorance but requires in this day that all men should repent because wisdom, knowledge and understanding have come through the man Jesus Christ.
This is your good news today, you can’t tap into this availed knowledge, wisdom and understanding if you are hung up on the days which God himself forgot. Be free, in Jesus’ name. Hallelujah!
Prayer: Father I thank you for this truth. I repent for every misplaced piety that distracted me from the true power of your forgiveness through Christ. I repent for making room for condemnation where you have declared complete freedom. From today onwards, I receive your word as truth and I go upward and forward with it. I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, to the glory of your name, Amen!
CI.
