Movin' On

I don't know how many times people have come up to me and told me that, "Ryan I know that God forgives me, but I don't think I can ever forgive myself". Every time I hear that it just makes me sad. It is almost as if that person, without them realizing it, is saying, "I realize that God, creator of the universe that created everything I see and knows all, forgives me, but me, a person that cannot even predict what is going to happen a minute from now and the only thing I have ever created was something out of Legos, cannot forgive myself." There is something wrong with that picture.

How come God can forgive us, but we cannot forgive ourselves? It can be a very hard thing to do. At times I feel like there is no way that God has called me to do certain things in ministry. Did God forget what I did last week? In a way yes. In Jeremiah 31:34 it says, "For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." Now I don't believe that God actually forgets our sins, because he knows everything, but he has forgiven us and has moved on. We should also move on.

If we continue to dwell on our sin and continually worry about everything we have done, it becomes harder and harder for us to do work for the Kingdom. We begin to think that we can't be an ambassador for Christ because we have done this or that. If that was true then Jesus would be the only person that could have ever done anything for God. We all sin, no one is perfect.

We are better than our sins. God gives us grace and forgiveness so that we can become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21) Accept his forgiveness and move on from your sins. We are new creations and must be constantly renewed in the spirit of our minds. Start to think of yourself as a new creation and not as a sinner. Our identity is in Christ, act like it.

This week at RACTASTIC I will be talking about what you must do once you have become a new creation, the things you must put off and what you must put on.

-Ryan