Hebrews 8:12 “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” Today's episode talks about how God doesn't remember our sins. He forgives and forgets, so why are we still dragging our sins around? Why are we wearing our sins as if they are our identity? What if this was the year we just let our past guilt and shame go? Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
You Are A Saint That Sins Sometimes
Hebrews 8:12 “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Anytime I get together with a group of women and we start talking I sense a pattern. I am speaking about women as that is who I tend to hang around with, although I think men struggle with this as well. I think they struggle to talk about it though. Whenever I have been around women and they feel as though they can really open up and be honest and vulnerable they often talk about how they are feel like they are not enough. This feeling of not being enough often brings up shame as well. We regret the choices we made in the past, even when we didn’t feel like we had a choice.
On some level we know that we were doing the best we could and yet we feel guilty for the things we did anyway. For instance, once our children are older and we get the benefit of hindsight we can see that we weren’t always the best parent. We didn’t always react in the best way and we didn’t always do what was best for the children. However, we did always do the best we could in that moment. We did the best we could with what we had in that moment. We know that, and yet we still let shame and guilt eat us up inside. And as if our own shame and guilt were not enough, we also receive the shame and guilt that our teenagers feel the need to pile on. It’s as if it is a right of passage for them to tell us all the ways we failed them.
I know one day they will have a much better understanding of why we did what we did, but while they are teens they will not understand. Today I saw a post of Facebook and it made me remember about how we talked about in my class how God doesn’t remember our sins. I wasn’t sure if I did an episode on it and then when I looked back, I realized I did. It was not this same verse from the Bible however, and I really felt like the Holy Spirit wanted me to talk about it again, so I will listen and do just that. I think hearing that we are not a sum of our past mistakes is something we can’t really hear enough. It is something we need to keep hearing over and over again because the enemy wants us to forget it and as soon as we hear it he starts to tell us why that may be true for others, but it isn’t true for us.
This verse is telling us that God will forgive our wickedness and remember our sins no more. Why is it so hard for us to hear that and believe it? Why is it so much easier for us to believe the negative stuff the enemy tells us than the positive stuff our heavenly Father tells us? God knows all that we have done over the years, however, when we repent for our sins he forgives and forgets. This may be hard for us to comprehend because we stuggle with forgiving and forgetting. We tend to think if we forget then that person who did something to us is somehow getting away with something. We also struggle to forgive and forget what we have done because we struggle with thinking we are worthy of forgiveness and we don’t want to let ourselves off the hook too easily. The thing is, if Jesus says we are forgiven, who are we to hold onto it? If Jesus has already forgotten what we did, why are we still clinging to it? Why are we clinging to our old identity instead of clinging to the identity that Jesus has given to us?
I know I explained this in another episode #355 (click here for episode) if you want to go back and listen to it, but I thought it was really powerful when I heard it and I think it could be repeated a million times and we would still struggle to remember it. Jesus died on a cross for our sins. I think that is something that is easy to conceptualize as we can look at a cross and see his sacrifice. However, do we believe He did it for our sins, yours and mine? That is harder to believe. It is harder to think of his sacrifice as something He did for me personally and yet that is exactly who He did if for. He gave His life for you, individually, and for each one of us as an individual, not as a whole. It talks about how when Jesus was in the garden, asking His Father to let this cup pass from Him, he was thinking about all of our sins. Yours and mine included He willingly took them to the cross with Him, so when are were going to release them?
I want to touch on something it says in Romans 6:11 is says, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Do you consider yourself dead to sin? I wasn’t sure what to say when asked this question. I wasn’t sure what this question even meant. Then we were asked another question that gave us a little more clarity. Do you consider yourself a sinner who does the right thing now and then, or do you consider yourself a saint that sins sometimes. This is all about a mindset. We have to live into our baptism promises. We need to believe that Jesus died for our sins and when he did he removed our sinful nature. Our identity matters. You may think this is a little thing and it doesn’t really matter. You may think the above question is just a matter of semantics. I assure you it isn’t. What you tell yourself matters.
We are saints who sin sometimes. It is important that we understand this because the enemy wants us to focus on our sins. He wants us to think we are unredeemable. He wants us to feel like we are our sins. The enemy wants us to take on our sins as if they are our identity. For instance, I lied to someone therefor I am a liar. I stole a piece of candy from a friend, therefore I am a thief. You are not your actions, you are not your sins. You are a redeemed child of God, that is your identity. Your sins are things you do and they can be forgiven and forgotten.
I am not sure why the Holy Spirit wanted me to repeat those two paragraphs from an earlier episode. I felt strongly that the Lord wants us to know He is not holding on to our sins and so we shouldn’t either. I really feel like He is asking us to give them over to Him once and for all. I feel like the Lord is calling us to forgive ourselves, because He already has. Maybe that is something we could all give up for Lent this year? Maybe we could give up carrying around the guilt we feel over things God has already forgiven and forgotten. How much lighter would you feel if you finally released that guilt and shame to God? What if you made 2023 the year you turned it over to God and didn’t take it back? What if this year was the year you released it for good? Remember your identity, You are a saint that sins sometimes, not a sinner that gets it right sometimes. You are a child of the one true God. He loves you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord you are amazing and we are so grateful you don’t remember our sins. Please help us to forget as well. Please help us to turn them over to you. Help us to put them down and not pick them back up again. Help us to finally, once and for all release those things you have already forgiven and forgotten. If there is anything we are holding onto that we haven’t repented for please put that on our heart and help us take that to you and turn that over to you as well Lord. You are so amazing and the way you just forget our sins says so much about you. You are the best Father ever!! We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I can’t wait to share my witness with you tomorrow about all the healing I saw happen on the retreat last weekend. God was showing off big time I am so very grateful I got to be a small part of it. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!