When you discover how to forgive yourself and you begin to put it into practice, it has the potential to change your life and future in dramatic ways. God created you as His masterpiece and through His grace and mercy He willingly and wantonly forgives. Forgiveness is a part of His character. Yet, often I hear people say that even though they know God has forgiven them of their mistakes, sins, guilt and shame, they have not been able to forgive themselves. This is something most people wrestle with, mostly because we have good memories of our past, but God doesn’t want you to live in your past. Your past does not have to dictate your future. God has a future for you as His masterpiece. If you are going to live the future He has planned for you then you have to be able to get past your past by forgiving yourself. You have to be able to see yourself with the clean slate that God has given you through His forgiveness.
Why You Should Forgive Yourself
The good news is, you can forgive yourself and you should. Not just because you feel like you should, not just because you need relief or peace, (although those are pretty good reasons) you should forgive yourself because it’s part of God’s plan for you as His masterpiece.
What Does God Say?
What we can’t do is have a feeling or a thought and look for scripture to prove our thinking. Truth will never be discovered if that is the process. Culture wants to shape God, to make Him in our image, tell Him what to think and how we should live our lives. Humanity has been doing that since the beginning. It has never worked because God is God and we are not! So, when it comes to the idea of forgiving ourselves we need to look at what God has to say first on the subject and let His truth shape our thinking. Allow Him to shape our thought process and ultimately shape our lives. After all, He is the master artist and we are His masterpiece.
A Loving Heavenly Father
To start with, let’s look at who God is, He is our loving heavenly father who wants our lives to be lived as the masterpiece He created us to be. Here’s what He says about His love for you: “I have loved you…with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.” (Jeremiah 31:3 NLT) Look at how much He loves you. It’s a love that we really can’t completely understand: everlasting and unfailing. In other words, it’s a perfect love.
I’m a father of 4 kids. I love them, but if you asked them they would tell you that I have not loved them perfectly. I want to, I wish I could, I’m working on it, but there is one problem, I’m not perfect. Even I, as an imperfect Father, don’t want my kids to live in misery, guilt and shame because of their past mistakes. I want my kids to live in freedom from their past mistakes. I want them to have life and hope that comes from being forgiven. I want them to live with a clean slate as the masterpiece God created them to be. How much more does our Loving Heavenly Father want that for us? How much more does perfect love want that for us? For you?
It all starts by living in His forgiveness, which He offers to all of us when we come to Him. Then we need to get on about the business of forgiving ourselves. I will begin getting in the “How To” in tomorrow’s blog entitled “You Can’t Give What You Don’t Have”.
Don’t Miss A Post
Make sure you never miss a Life Palette blog, sign up to get it in your email and be encouraged to live as the masterpiece God created you to be daily!