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But God’s truth stands firm like a foundation stone with this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and “All who belong to the Lord must turn away from evil.” 2 Timothy 2:19 (NLT)
Imagine the scene in heaven. You are standing before the God of the Universe, the Creator and sustainer of all things. He has the power to send you to hell for eternity or welcome you into an eternal life of rest with him. Not to oversimplify but it’s sort of like the scene from the “Wizard of Oz”. Like the cowardly lion you stand shaking in your shoes as the greatness of God fills the room and shakes the very foundation of the building.
Between you and the throne stands the accuser. He’s not the red-suited, horn bearing being you remember from the pictures back on earth. He’s huge, he’s beautiful and his very presence says POWER.
He opens a scroll within your view. On it are the charges against you. Every time you disobeyed your parents is recorded. Every time you flipped off another driver is listed. Every time you lied about not going to church, talked evil of your neighbor, abused your kids and had sex with your girlfriend before marriage. The list goes on. Charge after charge.
There’s no hope you know. You are guilty. Guilty…as they say, as sin. Charge number one is read. In great detail the accuser tells how you did the act. Your attitude. Your words. He even goes so far as to mimic (perfectly, might I add) your facial expression. It’s as though he were there!
The Supreme Judge turns to you and asks how you how you plead. Guilty? Or Not Guilty. You are guilty of course. Guilty of every charge. But just as you are ready to speak, you hear a voice.
“NOT GUILTY FATHER!”
Jesus steps forward. He’s glowing. The compassion and love oozes from every pore. He looks at you and smiles proudly. Then he turns to his father and holds out his hands, the scars from the nails are obvious.
The Father smiles and looks at you. Satan grimaces and his beauty fades into anger and hate. And so it goes with every charge on that list. Satan accuses, Jesus reminds the Father that you are his. Not guilty by reason of the shed blood of Jesus.
When it’s all said and done, your heavenly Father smiles and says “Well done thou good and faithful servant. Enter into my rest.”
Our sin is forgiven. Our lives are free to live in perfect relationship with God. And it’s all because of Jesus.
PRAYER: Dear Jesus. I thank you for forgiving me of my sin. I confess to you the struggles I still have with anger, lust, worry and abuse. Forgive me for what I do. Thank you for who I am in you. In your name, Amen.
“Let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.” Hebrews 10:22 (NLT)
The little girl let out a piercing scream that brought both parents running to her rescue. She had been playing on her grandparent’s farm and building a ‘fort’ in the wooded area behind the barn. Unfortunately, she’d chosen to build her fort in the midst of a nest of wood ticks! Her parents spent nearly an hour picking ticks off the scared and crying little girl.
After a thorough inspection, a warm bath and a bowl of ice cream on Grandpa’s lap she felt much better. She got down to play but decided to stay near the house and play with her dolls.
“A little scared to go play in the woods?” Grandma asked her gently.
“A little maybe,” was her reply, “But mostly I still feel itchy, like the bugs are still crawling all over me.”
We can all, no doubt, identify with the little girl in the story. We walk through a spider web or discover some insect on us and for some time later still feel it’s ‘presence’ on us.
The same can often be true of sin. We fail to do what we should, or do something we know we shouldn’t. We may even wander far from God and live a lifestyle we know is wrong or become addicted to drugs, alcohol or lust.
Like the Prodigal Son, we come crawling back to God. We confess our sin. We work hard at cleaning up our act. But deep in the corners of our mind is this sense of guilt and shame that we can’t shake. We pray about it. Read Scriptures. We talk to counselors, pastors or trusted friends. Still we are haunted, sometimes day and night by the feeling of guilt on our lives. Much like the little girl continued to feel the wood ticks on her body.
So, why is that? Is God so angry with us that he won’t let us forget? Are the reminders of our past signposts to make us be sure we were sincere? Does God’s forgiveness fall short of our expectations because our ‘sin was so bad’ that he’s going to haunt us for the rest of our lives?
The simple answer to that is a resounding NO! The Bible is very clear in several places that once we confess our sins to Jesus and ask his forgiveness those sins are forgiven. The moment you asked, the blood of Jesus cleansed you from the penalty of that sin. We can still feel guilty though for a variety of reasons.
If you have asked sincerely for your sin to be forgiven and still feel guilty it could be a matter of healing and healing takes time. Sometimes that healing is made longer because people keep bringing up your faults. Sometimes it can be due to constant ridicule. Religion is a great source of guilt as well with constant reminders that we are bad.
The biggest culprit in our struggle with a guilty conscience though is Satan. That great enemy of Christ-followers wants nothing more than to keep you in the prison of guilt and remorse. He’ll lie to you. He’ll use other people to lie about you. He can even use religion to keep you captive. Don’t listen to him. Listen to the words of Jesus. “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more”. No matter how many times you come sincerely to Jesus he has promised to forgive you. Tell Satan to take a hike. Tell him to get lost. In Jesus Christ you are NOT GUILTY because of the blood he shed on the cross for you.
PRAYER: Dear Jesus. I’ve been carrying this load of guilt long enough. I now realize that the guilt I feel is a false belief that I’m not forgiven. I renounce the efforts of Satan to keep me in the prison of my soul. From this day forward I’m going to live in the freedom of your forgiveness. Amen.
For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time. Hebrews 10:10 (NLT)
What do you measure your life by? What we use as our standard is a reflection of our character. Compared to a person deep in the jungle of South America I may be considered very rich. Of course, by Bill Gates standards I’m very poor. I’m very tall compared to a two-year-old; very short compared to a sky scraper. I’m old…compared to a newborn infant; I’m young compared to God!
The problem with the ‘comparison game’ in our spiritual lives is that we only have two things to compare ourselves to. Either we compare ourselves to God or we compare ourselves with other human beings. We can say “Well, I know its wrong to do [fill in the blank] but at least I don’t fly planes into buildings. Or you can say “Sure, I know [fill in the blank] is wrong but at least I don’t molest children. The problem is, in God’s eyes sin is sin. Period. You can rationalize all you want, but if you are living anything but a perfect life you are living a life of sin.
The only other option is to measure our actions against the perfect, Holy, all-knowing, all-powerful creator God of the universe. When we measure our actions against him it’s pretty obvious what the results will be. It’s simply impossible as a human being to live a life that measures up to the plumb line of God’s holiness and perfection. Anything less than perfection disqualifies us from eternal life with God. Anything less than perfection in our relationship with our divine lover hinders that relationship.
The good news in all this is that when we have Christ in our lives God no longer measures our lives against his plumb line, he uses Jesus in our place. We can never meet God’s standards of holiness and perfection but Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for us makes us perfect in God’s eyes!
Will sin still hinder our daily relationship with our divine lover? Yes. But we can be forgiven. We can start over again. We can come to God and restore that walk with him because the sacrifice of Jesus’ blood forgives us for all time. That’s grace. Grace puts Jesus next to God’s plumb line and calls us holy!
Don’t compare yourself to others. Stop playing the rationalizing game, telling yourself it’s not your fault or ‘you know it’s wrong but…’ Stop living in failure thinking you’ve messed up one too many times. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross makes you free to live a love relationship with God that is free of sin and full of forgiveness for those times we fall short in our humanity.
PRAYER: Holy God, it’s easy to compare myself to the ‘really bad’ people in life until I realize that the only true measurement of right or wrong it the plumb line of your holiness. I’m a sinner. I fail. Sometimes I fail intentionally because I want it my way. Please forgive me for my stubborn desire to please me in my way. Empower me with your Spirit to live in right relationship with you. Thank you for the grace Jesus gives by taking my place next to your plumb line. Amen.
“for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.” 1 John 5:4
What gives you victory in life? At the end of the day, when you look over the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory, what do you attribute to the gold medal hanging around your neck?
For some people it might be that you finally made it a whole day without a cigarette (or a whole week or month or some other milestone). Others may mark it as a victory because even though the words were on the ‘tip of the tongue’ no foul language made it through the lips. Maybe you were actually at the computer and resisted the temptation to visit ‘the sites’. Perhaps you bask in the glory of the fact that you didn’t kill your teenager with words.
We all like victory over some of the bad habits we struggle with daily. Unfortunately those victories can be few and far between. Rather than putting notches in our belts for ‘making it through another day’ we sigh and wonder if we’ll ever be able to break that habit. Seems like the more we fail the harder it is to pick ourselves up, brush the dust from our clothes and move on. “Why try, really? You just know you are going to fail again. And, where is God in all this.”
You look to heaven, maybe even shake your fist and say (sometimes even audibly), “Where were you. I thought you were going to help me? I thought you loved me. I thought you’d never leave me. I thought…”
It might seem strange to you. It might be hard to understand, but God uses the struggles in our lives to make us stronger. He doesn’t enjoy seeing us fail any more than we do. Yet he knows, in all his wisdom, that today’s failures make us stronger for tomorrow’s crisis. It might be that God refuses to remove the habit we struggle with so we will rely on him more and us less.
The warrior overcomes his enemy be rendering him helpless. The athlete overcomes his enemy be defeating him in the arena. The Christ-follower overcomes the struggles in life by reliance on God and believing that someday victory will come, even if it comes through death.
Rather than focus on the battle, focus on the one who has already defeated the enemy. Rather than dwell on your failures, remember that Jesus knew the day he went to the cross that you would fail once again. He went anyway.
Today, just for today, dwell on the fact that God lives within you. He’s walking where you walk. Seeing what you see. Feeling the temptation and frustration and anger you feel. Hearing the critical words hurled at you like a nuclear missile. Be patient with others and more importantly yourself.
Do your best today as you go to battle. Try to rely on God’s Holy Spirit who dwells within you. The one who wants to guide your thoughts and your actions in every situation. Do what you know is right. And no matter what happens, remember that whatever you do, God will do what he does best—extend his grace in your life.
PRAYER: Father God, there are days when I feel like such a failure. If I were to look up failure in the dictionary I’m sure I’d see my picture right there. I try so hard and fail. I blame others. I blame myself. I even blame you from time to time. Help me, during the frustrating times of life when I’m tempted to go against what I know is right, to remember you are right here with me to help me. Thank you for the grace you extend when I fail. Help me to remember the failures of today build the strength for tomorrow. In Jesus name, Amen.
Mike Fisk & Built with Grace 