Forgiving ourselves is an essential life skill, especially during times of reflection like Lent. In this episode, I address how we can often go too far in condemning ourselves and what we can do to correct that. I'll share insights on the importance of not focusing on our misery but rather on God's forgiveness. We must remember that after we confess our sins, God encourages us to move forward rather than wallow in self-pity. Embracing this forgiveness allows us to experience true joy and share that joy with others, demonstrating the grace and love we've received.
Takeaways:
Forgiving oneself is an essential life skill that we often overlook in our struggles.
During Lent, it's important to focus on God's forgiveness rather than wallowing in our sins.
We must remember that our feelings of unworthiness shouldn't prevent us from accepting God's forgiveness.
God desires for us to move forward after confessing our sins, not to dwell in guilt.
Accepting God's grace allows us to share joy and acceptance with others around us.
The ultimate demonstration of God's love is found in Jesus' sacrifice, which we should never forget.
Hi. Welcome to the Hobo Soul podcast of road advice from the Bible. And from me, Yvon Prehn, someone who's a little further down the road of life.
Let's get started with our topic today, which is episode number 35, Forgive Yourself. It's an essential life skill.
Lent is a time when we traditionally focus on things we want to change, and that's good. But at the same time, we need to be careful as we do that.
In today's episode, we'll sort out when we can go too far in condemning ourselves and what to do about it.
Today's quote is from Fulton J. Sheen, who said,
"I think that if God forgives us, we must forgive ourselves.
Otherwise, it is almost like setting ourselves as a higher tribunal than him."
Our challenge is that
A danger in Lent is that in pursuit of cleaning up our hearts and lives, we can begin to wallow in our sins.
When we focus more on our misery than on God's forgiveness, if we do that, our focus is in the wrong place. Forgive yourself and rejoice.
Now, let's talk about this a little bit more. We've talked about similar things in the past, but I think it.
It's worth repeating because I know I personally just beat up on myself and beat up on myself and beat up on myself, and I know I'm not supposed to do that.
And one of the things that always gets me out of it and one of my favorite passages in the Bible that motivates me to get out of that, beating up on myself. And some of you that have listened to me or been in my classes have heard this.
So forgive me for telling this story again, because I do mention it a lot, but it's when the children of Israel are in the process of conquering the land, they sin. God punishes them when the sin's hidden. Now, the specific details about it aren't important. What's important is how Joshua responds.
Sin's taken place. They've been punished again. They're hiding it. All of that's going on, and Joshua's just literally down on his face crying and moaning and groaning.
And God says to him, get up off your face. God tells him what to do to take care of the sin and move forward. He obeys, and the people go on to conquer the land.
His situation's common to all of us.
There are times, I must admit, when I'd rather stay on my face, figuratively or literally moaning and groaning and crying over my sins, my failures, how I can't be as disciplined as I want to be, how I must be doing something wrong or I wouldn't feel like this. Or on and on and on. Now, when those things happen, just stop it. And remember that Satan is the accuser of their brethren.
He always wants us to focus on what we did wrong and not on the immediate and current forgiveness we have in Jesus when we confess our sins to him. As Bishop Sheen's caution implies, if we don't forgive ourselves after we've asked for forgiveness, we. We're believing Satan instead of God.
We're believing that our opinion of ourselves is more important than God's. But God says to us, as he did so many in the Bible, after we confess our sins, after we acknowledge them, he simply says, go and sin no more.
Case closed. Not go and wallow, not go and mourn. Not go and keep thinking about how awful you were. No, just go. Sin no more. He doesn't want you to look back.
If you do, you may miss out on the incredible things he's planned for you. Now, if you're constantly thinking about your sin and how awful you are, you aren't thinking about God and how truly amazing his grace is.
If you focus only on how you think you don't deserve forgiveness, you'll probably have a hard time forgiving someone else and you'll carry around with you this cloud of disapproval. Nobody wants to be around somebody that's like that, somebody who hates themselves. That doesn't make you religious or humble.
It just makes you look self absorbed. In contrast, if you totally accept and rejoice in the forgiveness God's given you, that will show also joy.
Real joy that comes from being clean and right with God, can't help but spill out of you and touch the people around you. If you're a person who knows you've been forgiven, that will show.
Also you'll be a person that people can come to no matter where they've been or what they've done in their lives, because they can see that you serve a God who doesn't hold sins against people who trust him.
The total expanse of God's grace, getting what we don't deserve, eternal salvation and the fulfilling life that we can live, is really hard to comprehend.
I was thinking about it and you know, it's not like the facts of Jesus, life, death and resurrection, which we can verify through careful, honest historical study. It doesn't make sense. His grace isn't something that we can analyze or we can look at or we can get historical verification for.
No, it's something that we simply must believe. It's just as real as those things. But it is something that we do have to take on faith and then also too, what goes along with it.
God's mercy, not getting what our sins do deserve, is equally hard to comprehend and perhaps why we beat up on ourselves because we feel like, well, somebody has to pay for what we did. And when we fixate on that and it's just going, well, I have to pay for it, I have to suffer, I have to. Whatever.
Jesus reminds us very gently and kindly that I already paid the price I paid for your sin, Jesus says, and I did it because I love you.
The ultimate demonstration of that love, of course, is on the cross and the resurrection that followed, that we're going to look at in a few days at Easter.
The closer we get to it, though, when we're tempted to wallow in our sins, feel sorry for ourselves, and at our core believe that we aren't worthy of forgiveness. When all those things are going on, we need to get up off our face, realize that we aren't worthy of forgiveness. There's no surprise there.
But God gives it to us anyway because of what Jesus did for us. So get up, be joyful, and share the acceptance and love you've received to a world that so desperately needs it.
That's all for this podcast, for transcripts, links to related material, and much more to help you learn to know, trust, apply and teach the Bible, go to www.bible805.com for now, let me end with this benediction and prayer.
May you walk each day surrounded by the gracious love of the Father, guided by the gentle wisdom of the Holy Spirit, and conscious of the astoundingly real person presence of Jesus, who will walk with you until you're no more a hobo soul, no more a transient wandering heart, but at home in the kingdom prepared for you with your God forever. Amen.
