The last several blogs that I have posted here on Life Palette have been focused on How To Forgive Yourself, something most of us struggle with. The first step is to Trust Jesus To Heal The Wound. The second step is Trust Him To Use All Things For My Good. Today I want to give you the last step to completely forgiving yourself and living in FREEDOM!

Get To Know The New You

 “…anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT) When you made a decision to follow Jesus, God, your loving heavenly Father, gave you a fresh start, a new life. You get a do-over. You are not the same person you were. Your life is no longer defined by the sins and mistakes of your past. He has completely forgiven you. Now you need to get to know the new you.

The best picture to describe what happened to you is metamorphosis. You most likely remember this from middle school science class. Metamorphosis is when an organism changes from one stage of its life history to the next. The most common illustration is when a caterpillar changes to a pupa and then from a pupa to a butterfly.

You wouldn’t expect a butterfly to continue the rest of it’s life crawling around like it were still a caterpillar. It has to learn to live it’s new life, it needs to learn to fly. That is what you need to do. To forgive yourself you must understand that you are not the person you once were, and you must learn to live as the new person you are in Jesus.

Here are a few things you can do that will help you get to know the new you:

• Change The Way You Think

            “…let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think…” (Romans      12:2 NLT)

• Thank Him That He You Are Forgiven

            “…if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all                            wickedness.” (1 John 1:9 NLT)

• Thank Him That He Is Healing Your Wound

           “…for I am the Lord who heals you.” (Exodus 15:26 NLT)

• Pray For His Strength To Keep You From Temptation

          “And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.” (Matthew 6:13 NLT)

Forgetting The Past

 In Philippians Paul tells us one of his secrets for getting to know and live in the new life he has:

“…I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” (Philippians 3:13-14 NLT)