How Can I Forgive Myself?

This week at Almond Union of Churches, we continued our series on Forgiveness:  The real F word.  While last week we looked at how to make sure we were forgiven by God in  a message titled Finding Forgiveness, this week we look at how to forgive ourselves, in a message titled, How Can I Forgive Myself.

I identified three steps I must carry out to be able to truly forgive myself.  Last week we looked in depth at the first.  This week we summarized that message by going over the three steps again:  We must 1) recognize our need for God, 2) return to God, 3) receive forgiveness through Jesus and what He did on the cross.  but possibly the most important part of that message was that forgiveness is available to everyone who will turn to God and earnestly seek it.  The first step in my being able to forgive myself, is to come to God seeking forgiveness from Him, and knowing for sure that I have been forgiven.  Forgiveness by God enables me to forgive myself.  I can't possibly forgive myself if God hasn't first forgiven me.

The second step in my forgiving myself is to change my behavior.  We call this repentance.  I will never be able to forgive myself for something if I'm still doing it.  If I'm feeling grief and shame and despair, and I desperately want to be able to forgive myself for this, I've got to stop doing it.  I've got to turn away from the wrong behavior that caused these feelings of regret, and I've got to turn to God and make sure I get right with God again.

The third and final step in being able to forgive myself is to create a new future for myself.  Many people who experience the pain and regret and despair from sin fail here.  They are tempted to withdraw and isolate themselves and continue on in the pain they feel.  In order for us to get past it, we've got to truly start again, to step out in faith in the path God has for us.

If you would like to read the entire message, click on the title below.  You will also find an audio link if you would rather listen to it.

Forgiveness:  How Can Forgive Myself?

Choosing God...

I was talking to a wonderful lady in our church on Easter morning, and she mentioned how happy she was with her work in the church. She does as much as anyone, and I was certainly glad to hear her comments.

The comment came after the discussion of another member, who had just experienced a tragedy in their life. She made the comment that she hoped it would bring them closer to God and they would come to church, and get active in the church. She continued by saying that tragedy doesn’t always have that affect on people, sometimes people go the other way, and distance themselves from church and from God.

Perhaps that comes from blaming God. Perhaps that comes from a desire to be alone for a while after tragedy. Perhaps it comes from shutting ourselves out from others.

Yet the church offers a family that cares. Our church shows that so often with so many who are struggling. That's what church is about. Those that don't feel comfort from their struggles from the church probably aren't sharing their struggles with the church. Being open, you will find the church a very caring group.

She has experienced her share of tragedy over the years. For her, she chose God, and that choice has made all the difference.

Finding peace in what you can't understand...

On Thursday I performed a funeral for a young man who died suddenly. He was my age, and in getting to know him, I found that we had a lot in common.

It’s hard to explain the death of someone in their late 40’s. In fact, you can’t explain it. We come to funerals like this showing our lack of understanding. There really is so much that we don’t understand. Most of the time we can hide it well, we can appear to be in control of our own lives, our own destiny. But once in a while something happens that seems very unfair, shockingly unfair, and we realize that we really don’t understand as much as we might have thought we understood.

These things that we can’t understand can rock our world. They shake our foundations. We thought we knew a little bit about life, and then something happens to remind us we really don’t. But we want to. More than anything, the human race wants to understand. We pursue understanding. Everyone of us, to some extent, thinks we understand things. We all develop our own opinions. We believe we know the way things are. So it can be particularly devastating to find that we don’t understand the really big things. Life. Death. Disease. As hard as we try, we find that there is always more that we don’t understand, then what we do understand.

Perhaps one of God’s greatest blessings is the ability to find peace, even in those situations we may never understand. Peace is one of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). Understanding isn’t.

When your foundations are shaken, seek God’s peace. We may never understand, but we may find peace.