Break the Bonds of Guilt and Shame: Faithful Friday

John 3:17
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Can you imagine if you had to make the choice to sacrifice your child to save someone else that you loved? I do not think that there are many other things that could be more painful than that.

Well, what if you made that painful sacrifice, but the person that you were trying to save rejected it? What if they said, “well fine…that is great and all that you made a sacrifice for me, but I don’t think that I really deserved it so thanks, but no thanks”.

Terrible right?

This is exactly what so many of us do to God on a regular basis. Even those of us who have chosen to accept His gift of life, so often chose to live in a place of death by not allowing the blood of Jesus to cover our mistakes, our bad choices, our selfishness, our pride…the list goes on and on.

My sin is different.
I should have known better.
I’m never going to learn.
I’ll never be good enough.
I deserve to suffer for this.

Do any of those sound familiar?

Why is it that so often we choose to carry around our own little personal ball of guilt and shame? What good does it do? Sometimes I think that many of us cling to our guilt out of habit. It is so engrained into our thought patterns and we are just not so sure who we would be with out it. If we let go of the guilt would we turn into terrible people that continue to make the same mistakes over and over again?

Could it be possible that we are using our own guilt to be the bars on our own little personal prison cells that prevent us from messing up again?

God gave us His son, Jesus for a reason…because every one of us needs Him. God’s forgiveness is not a one time deal and you’re all done…it is an ongoing daily gift that we need to make a choice to accept each and every day.

Choose today to reject guilt’s hold and throw off the burden of shame. For it is not these things, but LOVE that concurs all.