Today, after you've confessed your sins to God, ask God to help you to forgive yourself as God has forgiven you.
No more rehearsing of the sins that caused you to tell God you were sorry and to ask God for His forgiveness! God's Word in the Bible promises: "As far as east is from the west, so far [God] removes our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12).
When we hold onto sin that God has forgiven, we display a lack of faith in God's compassion and God's willingness to keep His promises. But the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, show us God's compassion and God's resolve to do all that's necessary for us to be forgiven and have our relationship with God restored. When we genuinely confess our sins to God in Jesus' Name, we can be sure that we are forgiven.
Holding onto our sin and refusing to accept God's forgiveness can also turn our guilt into shame.
Guilt is God's prod to our consciences, alerting us to something we have done that's building a barrier between God and us, between us and others, between us and God's forgiveness.
Shame is that boulder we carry on our shoulders when we think that our faults, real and imagined, make us irredeemably bad.
Look, no one is irredeemably bad. Even the bandit on the cross next to Jesus turned from sin and to faith in Jesus with His dying breaths and Jesus told him, "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43).
Through Jesus, we know, as the Bible tells us, "If we confess our sins, [God] Who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). It also says that "everyone who believes in [Jesus] receives forgiveness of sins through His Name" (Acts 10:43).
Today, after you've confessed your sins to God, ask God to help you to forgive yourself as God has forgiven you.
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