Forgiving yourself.

I didn't write this post, but i feel it hits some valid points.
Defiantly helpful for those dealing with personal forgiveness.

Forgiving Yourself - A Belief System
Forgiving yourself is essential. There is a tendency in all of us to hold ourselves more accountable than we do others. Perhaps you have been one who can justify forgiving others, even for a heinous offense, yet you find no justification for forgiving yourself for an equal or lesser offense. Perhaps you believe that forgiving yourself is not even a consideration because you think you must hold yourself in a state of constant remembrance, lest you forget. Perhaps you believe there is a price, some form of life-long penance that you must pay.

Forgiving Yourself - The Divine Example
Forgiving yourself is not specifically addressed in the Bible, but there are principles regarding forgiveness that should be applied. For example, when God forgives us, it states that He remembers our sins no more (Jeremiah 31:34). This does not mean that our all-knowing Father God forgets, but rather, because He forgives us, He chooses not to bring up our sin in a negative way. Peter said, "In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality" (Acts 10:34). Applying "no partiality" to the issues of forgiveness, God does not choose to forgive one person and not another. He forgives everyone who believes in Jesus Christ. Applying His "no partiality" standards to ourselves, it is just as important to forgive ourselves as it is to forgive others.

Forgiving yourself is not about forgetting. It is about not bringing the offense up to yourself in negative ways. Forgiving yourself is simply letting go of what you are holding against yourself so that you can move on with God. If God has moved on, shouldn't we do the same? Philippians 4:9 states that we are to put into practice those things that we have learned from God and from His Word. To continue to rehearse in our thoughts the events of our transgression, opposes Philippians 4:8 which tells us to dwell on whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable.

Forgiving Yourself - Personal Action
Proverbs 16:25 says, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." The energy it takes to harbor anger, hatred, and resentment towards yourself is exhaustive. Every bit of energy we give to negative activities and dwelling on regrets, robs us of the energy we need to become the person God wants us to be.

Life is full of choices and every choice we make will either take us in a positive, life-giving direction or rob us of the opportunity to be a life-giving individual. Forgiving ourselves does not let us off the hook, it does not justify what we have done, and it is not a sign of weakness. Forgiveness is a choice that takes courage and strength, and it gives us the opportunity to become an over comer rather than remaining a victim of our own scorn.

If you do not forgive yourself of past sins, it is a form of pride. Whenever we enact a different set of rules, a higher set of standards for ourself over others, that is pride. When we can find it within ourself to forgive others, but not ourselves, we are saying that we are less capable of making a poor decision than others. We are somehow more intuitive, wiser, more insightful, more careful than others, and therefore, we are without excuse and should not forgive ourselves. When we reject the forgiveness extended to us by God and others, when we refuse to forgive ourselves, what we are doing is setting ourselves above others and that is pride! Proverbs 16:18 says, "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Unforgiveness of oneself will bring self-destruction, a haughty spirit, and a fall. Christian forgiveness will bring peace.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it- the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. - Romans 3:21-25.

If God loves us.....

I had a question on my last blog post and i felt i should focus on that for today. Being that it is one of the most difficult questions for Christians to answer i will try my hardest to make sense of this.

First things first is that the world isn't as God planned for it to be. If you read through Genesis Originally when God created the world everything was good ( Read through Genesis 1:1-31). and as you continue reading you will understand that Suffering in the world is a result of human kind turning away from God = our relationship with God turned to poop. This was the fall of man or As many people know as the story of Adam and Eve (that was the start at least)

Now God is just and will not allow this rebellion to last forever, every human being and the world itself is under God’s judgment, and will continue to decay and go wrong until God ends it one day. He wants everyone to understand the state of things and so uses our circumstances (including suffering) to makes us aware that the world is not as it should be. He wants us to turn back to him and be reconciled.

So God, because of his love, has done something about the suffering in this world. He has sent Jesus to die for us. Jesus was God’s son, he was a perfect man, who did not deserve God’s punishment, and yet he took our punishment by suffering and dying a most unjust death on the cross. The book of the Bible called First Peter tells us that “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” (1 Peter 3:18)

And after having suffered and died for us, Jesus was raised back to life, and when he returns, the world as we have it now will end. Those who believe in Jesus will enter a new world where there will be no tears and no suffering.

So this is a very simply outline of just some of the things the Bible talks about suffering, and is by no means complete. The main thing to understand is that suffering comes from our selfishness and rejection of God, we as a human race has bring it upon ourselves, and we and our world are also under God’s just punishment because of this. But this is not going to last. God loves us dearly and has already suffered himself in order to bring us out of this suffering world. We have a choice to accept this gift from God, or to persist in our selfishness and remain under the punishment of God.

If you would like to look into this issue further, there is a very good book I can recommend, called If I were God, I’d end all the Pain by John Dickson. It is a very short book that goes through how different religions respond to suffering and explains why the christian message gives a satisfactory answer in light of this.

Hope this will help.

For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God,
to them who are called according to His purpose
Romans 8:28