Are you really that bad?

When everything else fails to get us down, when the temptations that the devil has thrown our way have not worked, when we have stood strong and believed in God, there is one tool that the devil has in his arsenal of weapons that works every time, what is that dreaded weapon? Has he finally gotten us to commit adultery, to take that money that doesn’t belong to us, to tell a lie about someone that causes pain in their life, any of those good weapons? The answer to that would be a resounding NO! Those things are way too obvious, we know better, we all know what the big sins are, right? So what does he use? He puts his best weapon to work right between our ears, in our mind, and that is GUILT! He tells us that we are not good enough for God to love, if only people knew what we had done, what we had thought, how we had acted, and then they would know what hypocrites we really were! Guilt about what we did before we asked God to forgive us in Jesus’ name, before we asked to be cleansed in the Blood of Jesus! Do you remember that as Jesus was dying on the cross, with His dying breath, He said to the thief hanging on the cross next to Him that his sins were forgiven and that he would dine with Him in Paradise! That man didn’t have time to do any righteous acts, no giving in the offering or taking food to the poor or visiting the sick, he was almost dead himself, he simply asked and he was forgiven.

God has already forgiven you, now do the really tough thing and forgive yourself! Do for yourself what you would do if your child came to you crying and asking you to forgive them for some infraction of the rules, you would forgive them, you know you would, so just treat yourself that way because you are God’s child and you are bought with a price, the blood of Jesus!.

Repeat after me, I AM FORGIVEN, GOD FORGIVES ME AND NOW I FORGIVE MYSELF!