Forgive Yourself

Many people struggle with the shame of sins from the past. 1 John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." We do not have to live in fear that something we've done is unforgivable. Once we have repented and turned from sin, God is faithful to forgive us. We can leave the past in the past.

The truth is that none of us can earn God's love.  There is nothing you can do or undo to make God love you any less or more. This is why God sent His only son Jesus to die on the cross to pay our debts and free us from our sin. His love for us is deeper than we could ever comprehend. He wants to love, accept, and forgive us when we turn to Him. Isaiah 30:18, "Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him."Shame often prevents us from intimacy with God because we feel unworthy and therefore distant from Him. 

Satan does not want us to feel like we can ever be in right standing with God.  Don't waste another day condemning yourself for sins of yesterday when God has already forgiven you. Psalms 103:12, "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us."Remaining in bondage over past sin is sin in itself. Trust the truth of God's word that the death of Jesus Christ was enough to free you from sin so you can move forward and become everything He has created you to be.

Suffer On Jesus

In the middle of the night I awakened with the phrase “Suffer on Lord Jesus” repeatedly playing in my mind. I had been going through some difficult things recently and I felt that the Lord was telling me to literally lean on him through my suffering.

Unfortunately, we are not promised that we will never suffer in this life. In fact John 16:33 says ^“ These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

A lot of times we feel like we go through things alone, and sometimes we may even push God aside or blame God or question, doubt or feel like God is really far away, but the desire and heart of Jesus is for us to come to Him as a relief from our suffering.

Matthew 11:28-30:

 "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light"

To take Christ’s yoke means to submit to Him. In order to find the rest Jesus is talking about, we have to turn from whatever we are presently depending on to completely depending upon Him. When we are yoked with Jesus, He bears the load for us.

Psalm 91:4: He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

We must keep our eyes focused on Him, and the truth of His word.

Psalm 55:22 Cast your burdens on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.

If we will fully submit and yield our lives to him, he will always be there beside us pulling the weight for us. The only time the load becomes seemingly too much to bear is when we take our eyes off of Him and try to handle the load ourselves.

Many of us have responded to Him as our Savior, but we have not fully submitted to Him as our Lord. When He seeks to slip the yoke around our necks to join Him, we resist, refusing to listen and truly submit to His Word and acknowledge His authority.

God wants us to trust in His gentleness and goodness.

Suffering is not enjoyable for anyone, but no one is exempt from it. Every single person goes through trials. But, In suffering we come to hope more fully in God and put less confidence in the things of the world. That is his will for us. And through our suffering we will benefit from a deeper relationship with Him as we learn to lean on Him alone. It’s in those times that our relationship with Him becomes less formal and artificial and more personal, real, intimate, and deep.

I can honestly say that as I reached my breaking point, my suffering became the beginning of the most beautiful relationship with Jesus. I read a quote that I really liked that says. “Something very beautiful happens to people when their worlds fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor.”

If it wasn’t for my suffering, I would never have the beautiful fellowship that I have with the Lord today.

Its only in a battle that true strength and courage of a believer is revealed. Faith is not faith until it has been tested. But those who draw near to God in times of trial will find that they cannot leave his presence without receiving his strength.

Eternal Perspective

God woke me up at 3:30 in the morning and gave me the words, “Our eternal perspective must come before our understanding.”

Often, we tend to look at life from a temporal perspective. A perspective that is limited to what we can see, feel, touch, explain, and experience right now. We are focused on the here and now, we want instant gratification, and we live as if this current life is all there is.This may be our current reality, but God wants us to realize that although we live in time now, God created us for eternity. Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that God has set eternity in the human heart. We want to live forever. It's within us.This is why death seems and feels unnatural. No one looks forward to death. We all want to continue living. Therefore, we must learn to live not for time alone, but for eternity, understanding that it exists. We are to live our lives in time with eternity as the objective. Scripture reminds us that our time on earth is brief: James 4:14 says  "For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." Our life on earth is but a tiny speck compared to eternity. Imagine a vast ocean as eternity and your earthly life as just one drop of water.

Eternity is what our spirit ushers into after death of our physical body here on earth. Some people choose to deny eternity, but once you are alive, your spirit is alive forever regardless of the physical death of your earthly body.

The Bible says we will spend eternity in one of two places. We will either be in Heaven with The Lord- or we will be separated from God in hell. The only way to gain entrance into heaven is through making Jesus Christ your Lord and savior. There is no other way, no other God, no other belief system. You do not enter Heaven by your own merit. In a supernatural vision of eternity, the Lord showed me how we are not good on our own. God is the source of any goodness, and without Him, we are dead in sin. There are truly no "Good people."

That is the reason God sent Jesus to die for us. Jesus’s death and blood is what washes us clean of sin. And if we are not cleansed by that blood, we will not be allowed in God's presence when our physical body dies. God gives us this time on Earth to accept the offer of his free gift, so that we will be able to spend eternity in Heaven with Him.

We all love the idea of being in an eternal paradise. No more sorrow, no more crying, no more pain, and no more dying. But eternity in hell is something no one wants to talk about. No one wants to think about going to a horrible place forever. And I’ll be perfectly honest that for a long time I tried to deny the existence of hell. It scared me, I didn’t like it. I didn’t understand it. But you need to understand that a) hell really does exist and b) what hell actually is. It is the absence of Gods presence. Gods presence is the source of all love, peace, comfort, joy, and any good thing you have and will ever experience. If you truly had understanding of the these things, you would never choose to go to hell. You wouldn’t even risk ending up there. Its not a party where everyone is having fun sinning. It is an absolutely horrible place of mental and physical torment, anguish, and you would much rather be dead than bear it. That may be the most horrifying part- that it doesn’t end. You will not die, and you will be there forever once you are there.The Lord allowed me to experience this, and it is nothing to joke about or take lightly. 

I do not share this to scare people, but it is a truth that cannot be overlooked. God does not wish for any to perish. He is patient with us, gently nudging us to come to repentance and into a relationship with Himself.

Psalm 89:47-48 " Remember how short my time is; For what futility have You created all the children of men? What man can live and not see death? Can he deliver his life from the power of the grave?"

These are matters that nobody wants to think about. We don’t like death, its so tragic, and it seems so horrible, but yet it is inevitable and inescapable by no one. The one thing you know for sure is that one day you will die, if the Lord does not return in your lifetime, your physical body will die.

We are born into an imperfect world, filled with disappointment. Pain, death, and a lot of unanswered questions. And we often try to make sense of life based on a very narrow perspective that this life is all there is and its all that matters. What started my whole journey to get closer to God was getting those answers, and a feeling of being unsatisfied and longing for something more, something deeper. Why are we here? If we are just here to live and then die then what is the point? 

God is saying that our attitude, outlook, and standpoint on Eternity must be solid before we can have understanding- before we have the ability to abstract the meaning out of life. Looking at life from an eternal perspective is like looking through a lens which brings everything into crisp focus.

Matthew 6:19-21: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

2 Peter 3:11-14: "Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace."

There is going to come a day when God will create a new heaven and earth and it will be a place where only righteousness dwells. Everything that you did here out of selfishness, out of sin…everything not holy and pure will burn up at judgement day. And what will be left is what you did for God. God will reward you for how you lived your life here. This is our encouragement to live this life in such a way that we will reap eternal reward.

2 John 1:8- "Watch out that you do not lose what we have worked so hard to achieve. Be diligent so that you receive your full reward."

This scripture tells us that we can lose eternal reward for our behavior and choices here. It is cautioning us not to fall into sin and focus on fulfilling selfish and sinful desires because of the temporary pleasure it will bring today, in this life, on this earth. Having an eternal perspective is realizing that the eternal life is the one that actually matters because it doesn’t end. There is no more death at that point. But we will die in this realm and everything on this current earth will pass away.

Do not give up, do not stop following Jesus, do not start fixing your eyes upon the lusts of this current world that are not of God. It is difficult to see people getting promoted, obtaining wealth, status, power, and fame by lying, cheating, stealing, being manipulative, vindictive, and selfish. It may seem as if these people are "blessed", but do not be fooled. Their reward is temporary. Galations 6:9 tells us not to become weary in doing good, for if we do not give up, the time will come when we will reap the harvest.

James 1:12 says "Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him."

When I think of the new heaven and earth, its hard to imagine. There will be no more pain, suffering, sorrow. God will wipe the tears from our eyes and no one will die again. We cant even comprehend what God has prepared for those who love Him.

This eternal perspective should change your life, your attitude, and your focus to the things of God. We all have various obstacles that we have to overcome in this life. But each challenge we face is preparing us for something much greater in the next life.

II Corinthians 4:17- 18: "For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

Whatever hardship or trial we are facing right now, no matter how detrimental it seems to us is actually "light"in the eyes of God, because God sees the bigger picture. He sees our eternity. And hes telling us it Is MOMENTARY, it will go away, and it is producing a glory that vastly outweighs these troubles and will last forever!

This understanding will equip you to see your suffering in the context of the glory that will result from what God has called you to go through. Even death you'll see differently. An eternal perspective teaches us that good can come of bad, strength can be borne of weakness, and joy can come on the other side of sorrow.


So in this life… try to accentuate the positive, cling tight to the Word of God, and hold on to the assurance of good things to come because they WILL come.