Forgiven

I think the biggest struggle I have as a Christian is remembering that I am forgiven. Satan loves nothing more than to unpack the memories of my past life and rub my face in the shame of the person I used to be. And it works every time! I can be cruising right along, serving God and all of a sudden something triggers a memory of something in my past that I am not proud of, and BOOM, I am swimming in a mire of regret, or self hatred, because of things that I knew better than to be doing. Then I start beating myself up, and I get depressed, because I have not been a person that I can be proud of. I take my eyes off of God, and like Peter, I start sinking like a stone. 

When all I have to do is remember that I am forgiven. My sins have all been washed away. The Bible says that when we confess our sins God is just to forgive them, and not only that, but He forgets them, and puts them as far away from us as the east is to the west. God never wants to look at the sins we have committed once He has forgiven us for them. So why do we keep letting Satan bring them to our remembrance and make us feel like we have not been forgiven? 

I have some things in my past that I have really struggled with. Satan nails me with them over and over again. Then I start to wondering if I really have been forgiven, did I forget to confess this to God? So I take it to God, ask forgiveness, over, and over, and over again. I know that God is patient, but I think sometimes He shakes His head at me and sighs deeply and says, "Here we go again." I have been talking to my counselor about it and she said that I have to remember that when I got saved that I became a new person. That I am not the person I used to be, that did the things that Satan reminds me about. She said that I cannot continue to beat myself up for the mistakes of my past, because all that does is give Satan power, and it keeps me from fully serving God. 

I have thought a lot about that this past week. I am one of those reflective people who sit and ponder things for hours. I have had a lot of quiet alone time this week, and have done a lot of thinking and soul searching. I have realized that I have been a lot like Lot's wife, I  have so much ahead of me that is wonderful, but I cannot resist looking back at the life I once lived. While I don't fear being turned in to a pillar of salt, I am just about as worthless as one, when I do this, because I am not looking at God, and towards the new life He has made for me to live. I have to conquer Satan on this, and break his power over me in this. I am really good at giving this advice to friends and family but really struggle hard at taking it. God saved me. He chose me. He knew about my past and loved me anyway. Jesus loved me enough to die for me, to pay the price for my sins so I would be able to be forgiven of them. Sometimes I get down and think that God surely made a mistake in choosing me, and that if He would look back over His records and see the life I have lived, He would take back His gift of salvation, but I know that is not possible! Nothing slips by God, and He sent His Son to save those who were broken, and full of sin. He is the great physician, who can lovingly fix the most awful mess and turn it in to something beautiful. When God looks at me He doesn't see the mistakes I made, He sees the one He loves. In the Bible,  John always refers to himself as the one Jesus loved. But any of us who are children of God, can say the same thing. WE are also the one that Jesus loved. God loved us enough to create us, and send His Son to die for us, Jesus loved us enough to go through that horrible death so that we can spend eternity in Heaven with Him, and the Holy Spirit loves us enough to convict us of our sins so that we will confess them.
And Satan...... Satan hates us. Because we turned from him to God. Because we quit living a worldly life and started trying to live a Godly one. We struggle, yes. We fail, oh all the time. And every time we do Satan thinks that he has us where he wants us, and that if he can keep us down, we will turn our back on God and go back to following him. So he starts reminding us of our failures, making us feel unworthy of God's love and grace. But I have decided that I am not going to play his game anymore. I am a born again, forgiven child of God. I have been adopted in to the family of God. I have been set free. I am the one that Jesus loved. It's what we have learned our whole life, we even taught it to our kids. Jesus loves me, this I know...... and even though I have made mistakes, and still do, they are not what defines me. What defines me, is how I choose to worship and serve the One who created me. I am not defeated..... I am FORGIVEN!!