8/11/15
Lets discuss the concept of amazing grace. Do you believe in this perception? Do I believe in it?Of course the idea of this gift needs no introduction. We are all aware that the gift of grace is given freely to us once we believe that Jesus is God. We believe that He stepped down out of heaven and that His whole life and death on Earth was spent teaching us and modeling to us a new Covenant by which we can be assured that we will be spending eternity in heaven.
I remember my mother teaching me about Jesus before I even entered my Catholic school. I knew early on that the only way I could become acceptable to be accepted into heaven was because of the fact that Jesus died as the last and final blood sacrifice to atone for the sins of man (or woman if you will), and His life has made all the difference.
The problem is that people do not believe that the gift is freely given. So they carry guilt about things done that are already forgiven. Now I am not saying that we do not need to deal with the evil we do. The first step is going to God and repenting. We should follow that up with some thought about the lesson we learned and a sincere effort to avoid doing it again. If we do repeat the sin we need to follow the same process. Go to God. Repent. Learn. Turn away. Let it go.
Did you get that last thing? LET IT GO! And here us the rub. We berate ourselves and wallow in guilt and self condemnation about something that has already been forgiven. God does not have clip boards arranged alphabetically so He can find it easily to add notes about our shortcomings. There is a song that explains it better than I can, so I am putting the song at the end of this devotional. However I am going to use some of the lyrics of that song to make my point.
"No matter the bumps
No matter the bruises
No matter the scars
Still the truth is
The cross has made
The cross has made you flawless
No matter the hurt
Or how deep the wound is
No matter the pain
Still the truth is
The cross has made
The cross has made you flawless
Take a breath smile and say
Right here right now I'm ok
Because the cross was enough"
Never loose sight of the fact that the cross has made us FLAWLESS.
Written by
Corinne Mustafa
Listen to the song and pay attention to the words. It presents the concept that once forgiven the sin no longer exists. No matter what a person has done...no matter how reprehensible...the cross has provided forgiveness that is permanent. All we need to do is to get the lesson, but there is no reason to throw the "baby" (yourself) out with the bathwater.
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