“May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen.”
Galatians 6:18 NRSV
Guilt is a useless emotion. A tool of the enemy to keep you looking backward. So many of us have fallen victim to guilt (blame for offenses committed which can be real or imagined). The regret we feel becomes lodged in our bones and causes us to waste precious time and energy feel badly, rehashing the past and sometimes even trying to erase it by doing good in the future. While this might seem like a good idea, the past is forever fixed behind us. There is nothing we can do to change it.
While God has the power to redeem and use it for our good; God doesn’t erase our past offenses. Instead God absolves us of the blame, shame and spiritual consequences of our actions freeing us to reconcile our offenses by: learning valuable lessons about ourselves, forgiving ourselves (verses waiting for forgiveness from others) and moving forward…smarter, stronger, graced.
Miguel Ruiz in the book “The Five Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom” writes that the antidote to guilt is to always do our best. He claims the when we don’t do our best, we feel regret/guilt for outcomes that don’t meet our expectations. While I agree that always doing our best is a wonderful goal. The reality is that no one can do their best ALL the time. Rather than beat ourselves up, those of us who have an intimate relationship with Jesus have grace, which covers us and allows us to move forward…to flourish forward.
We Flourish Forward when:
•we ACCEPT Gods grace and refuse to allow our regrets and feelings of blame to keep us stuck in an endless cycle of revisiting the past
•we APPLY God’s grace and refuse to let those who we have offended manipulate and hold us hostage to the worst of who we are
choosing instead to redeem our offenses by allowing the same grace that Jesus secured on the cross to remove the shame and blame from us
•we AFFIRM God’s grace by moving forward in freedom committed to doing better and living graciously
God’s grace is with our spirits when we accept, apply and affirm it by refusing to let others guilt us into what God has already graced us out of. We have the power through Jesus Christ to live guilt free so take stock, learn the lesson, forgive yourself and FLOURISH FORWARD!!!! ~JWM