16 Dec Does God Still Love Me After All I’ve Done…

Micah 7:19 ” He will again have compassion on us, And will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins Into the depths of the sea“. I have read about the worse people imaginable. There are literally monsters amongst us. They don’t look like we would picture them. There are no horns coming out of their heads. They don’t carry pitch forks. They don’t look hideous or speak with a terrifying voice. They look just like you and me. They can be kind. They can funny. They can be caring. They can be murderers. They can liars. They can be thieves. They can be abusers of children. They can blend into any crowd. They can blend into the seats that fill our Churches. They are living amongst us. They are even in our Families. Their sins will send chills down your spine. I think of how the Pharisees and Sadducee’s plotted to kill Christ. The audaciousness of their crimes. Their desire for self-preservation, caused them to commit the most heinous act in the history of humanity. I think of David committing adultery and causing the murder of Bathsheba’s Husband. I think of Paul watching the stoning of Stephen, and not only watching, but cheering and encouraging the whole murderous scene. I think of Judas betraying Christ, the very one who came to die for him. I think of Hitler, and his attempted extermination of an entire people. There are more cruelties and acts of evil then I have words to describe them. No matter how far we personally move away from God, we can always rest assure that though we sin, we have never done anything close to that magnitude. We’ve become good at comparing our sins to others, minimizing our own sins while magnifying the sins of others. The truth is, out of all those people I just mentioned, there is yet a greater sinner I failed to mention. That greater sinner is me. I am that person. I am the biggest sinner I know. If you do not feel that you are the greatest sinner you know, it is because you are too busy focusing on other people, and not focusing enough on yourself. In my eyes, I am the worse of the worse. I know my weaknesses and my short comings, and yet I can’t stop myself from constantly falling victim to them. I have said the vilest things, I’ve secretly held the vilest thoughts, I’ve committed the most vilest acts. I’ve broken my word more times then I care to remember. Not only to people, but to God. I swore against doing something, only to go back and do it once more. God gave me the victory over something, only for me in a time of weakness, to go back and commit my self again to the sin he delivered me from. When I pray to God, many times my words are like music CD that has a scratch on it. I keep asking God for forgiveness for the same things over and over again. No matter how much I pray, how much I read, how much I study. The sins that so easily beset me, I find myself falling victim to once again. Paul says it best in Romans 7:18-20: “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh; for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19. For I do not do the good I want to do. Instead, I keep on doing the evil I do not want to do. 20. And if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” Paul expresses that there is an inability within us, to do what is right in the sight of God. He expresses that we are incapable of doing what is right in the sight of God. In our loins lie a burning desire to sin, but no righteousness to combat it. The whole body is bad. There is not one good salvageable part! I believe God when he says our sins are forgotten. That he does not hold against us that which we have confessed and received forgiveness for. I believe that he is not tallying up a score card against us. When God forgives, he forgives. God forgiving you, and forgiving me, for our sins is not the biggest issue, the bigger issue is us forgiving ourselves. You don’t know how many times things I’ve done in the past creep into my head, causing me to feel sorrow and pain all over again. Things I’ve already repented for. Things God has already forgiving me for. Sometimes are biggest problem isn’t Satan, our biggest problem is ourselves. How many times throughout the day do you regret something you did last week, last month, earlier in the day, or even years ago? A lot of us our holding onto things we do wrong years ago. We can’t let it go. If only we had done this, or done that, or said this or said that. While we may all have regrets, our regrets and bad choices did not catch God by surprise. He saw our bad choices. That’s why he decided to hang on a cross for you. Because of your bad choices. He knows in you, in your fleshly body, lies no power to do the right thing over your natural inclination to do the wrong thing. Which is what sin is. It is our natural carnal desires. We are natural born sinners. Sinning comes natural to us. In all its forms. Your sinful desires may be different from mine, or different from those of your Spouse, but we all have them. Our desire to do the “right thing”, is not enough to overcome the sin that is within us. I’ll tell you another truth: “Your love for Christ is not enough to overcome the sin that is within you either!“. I have sinned against Christ more times than I can count, by trying to “will” myself to do the right thing. Your will, no matter how strong it is, will never be able to overcome the eternal perseverance your body has to do the things that satisfy its deep desires. The only hope we have is in Christ. And not just in Christ, but in his Spirit that has now taking up residence on the inside of everyone who believes. When you start your day, you can only be led by one person at a time; Either your flesh or the Spirit. You cannot be led by both! Someone is doing the leading that day. And this is our battle: Who do we allow to lead us today? Who is leading us that day can cause confusion. Because sometimes doing what we believe to be right in our eyes, can lead to a undesired result. Doing what is good in your eye, is not always what was planned for you to do in Gods. God is a code that cannot be cracked! You cannot figure him out like you do a riddle or a jigsaw puzzle. That’s why our trust in him holds so much weight, because he is resonate with our logic. The was Christian missionary from the United States that went to a remote part of the World, to evangelize to a indigenous people. The result of that decision is he lost his life. He was murdered. He did what he thought was right in his eye, and that decision costed him his life. Did God lead him to such a fate, or was it through is own reasoning that he lost his life? Brothers and Sisters, because people have been killed serving the Lord, who of us can say, but what I can say is, trusting God, in all your ways, will be your biggest hurdle to overcome in this life. We have to let go of our regrets. We have to let go our mistakes. We have to let go of our bad decisions. We have to let go and let God. I suffer with regret. I am not immune to it. I struggle with it. I struggle with forgiving myself. Not daily. Not monthly. But it’s always there, waiting for me to act on it and fall into a state of mind of self-pity. God love us, and he saw all your bad decisions. You can’t change them, but we can make better ones going forward. With God still by our side, even when me know he should have bailed on us years ago. He is a friend that never leaves. That’s what Jesus is. A friend that never leaves. And a friend that doesn’t hold grudges….