I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance
Luke 5:32
It's a real discipline to allow yourself to be forgiven, to be healed, to be given something. To believe that God wants to wipe out all your guilt and give you a new heart and a new spirit is a challenge. Can you receive this truth? Obviously, the receiving is something that lives itself out in your family and in your community. Living together with others you discover that you have some talents, and others have other talents, and you need each other. In a way, what happens in the family, the receiving of gifts from each other, becomes a reflection of the great giving and receiving of God's faithful love.
It's hard to live in close relationships and to discover that the greatest gift is often to receive. It means you give up being in control and respond by saying, "Yeah, i need your help." When you make that conversion from being the strong one to being the one who receives, then real mutuality grows and love becomes real and visible.
I know i have a hard time accepting help, Lord, especially from those closest to me. May your grace open my heart to all the good gifts you want me to have.
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2 comments:
Forgiveness is something I have always struggled with. I think I easily forgive others, even when I don't agree with their actions...but for some reason when it comes to myself I find it almost impossible. I have been working really hard on this in recent years and although it is getting a bit easier, it is still a real struggle. I'm fairly certain that my unwillingness to forgive myself has held me back and prevented me from moving forward in aspects of my life toward things that God had planned and things that I desired. It was like I couldn't forgive myself and felt I didn't deserve those things. I don't want to be held back anymore, I am tired of punishing myself, I want what God has planned for me and I greatly desire to move forward.
Asking for help has been something of a struggle for me as well. My recent injury has somewhat cured me of this. I'm learning that asking for help does not necessarily make you weak or a burden. Everyone needs help now and then and I enjoy helping others when I can so who's to say I should deprive someone else that same enjoyment?!! :)
Good thoughts. Forgiving ourselves is definitely the more difficult of the two. We have to live with ourselves everyday, with our thoughts, with our memories, and our experiences. They don't just go away. But, that is also the intense beauty of God's grace. It doesn't just say, "Oh, it's ok," and just pretend that those mistakes didn't happen. God's grace is well aware of the mistakes we've made (Jesus paid our debt in that regard with his life), but it chooses to forgive anyway for the deep love God has for us. It's way easier to say that we should forgive ourselves because God does than it is to actually do it, but it's still true.
Guilt isn't all bad though. It helps us realize that we have done something wrong, and humbles us when we realize we aren't as awesome as we thought we were. We just don't want to stay there for too long. Humility is good, but paralytic guilt... not so much.
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