No Shame

Don’t let the enemy make you think you’re not forgiven!

The devil is a liar and he often speaks in the first person as he tries to get you to question what God has said. He’ll fill your mind with thoughts that begin with the word “I”: (“I” need a drink, “I” need a cigarette, “I” deserve to have one more piece of cake, “I” never get ahead, and “I” probably haven’t really been forgiven.)

But like I said, it’s a bunch of lies. In the moments before you became a Christian, you did one very important thing: you repented of your sins. You confessed the fact that you are a sinner to the Lord and you asked Him to forgive you. 1 John 1:9 tells us that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

That’s not a “sometimes” statement. It’s a statement in which we can have confidence. Look at 1 John 5:14 which tells us that “this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.”

So there you have it, beloved, once you acknowledge your sins and confess to the Lord the fact that you are a sinner, He hears and forgives. How can there be any shame after that?

The “shame” comes when the enemy reminds you of all the stupid and unGodly stuff you’ve done in your life. The devil remembers…you remember…but after you repent, God Himself forgets your sins. Read that for yourself in Jeremiah 31:34. The next step is to realize that when the enemy comes along, you have to say the same thing Jesus did in John 14:30: “…for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.”