Earlier this week, my husband sent me an email to go look at an article, The morality of personal finance, and I took it to mean I needed to forgive myself for being what I consider a bad steward of the money God has given me over the years. My guilt over not saving and being prepared when Murphy visits causes great stress between us!

Hey, I thought, I should write a post on forgiving myself!

Then life began its usual song and dance and stole the rest of the day.

Along the way, though, I saw a post from someone suffering a physical ailment and wondering if it was a punishment from God. Part of my response was that not forgiving yourself for whatever you think God is punishing you for could cause stress (guilt) and physical ailments and that we do that to ourselves. Hmmm… another sign I should write about forgiveness!

Then I saw a post on Facebook from Joyce Meyer Ministries that said, “Whenever the devil reminds you of your past, remind him of his future.” Again with the forgiveness…

And in “The Journey into Peace” blog post entitled, “Blessing – redefined”, I read about the woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and hair and He says about her, “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much:”

And finally, in her post, “Abide in Me”, Joy at GracefullMama.com wrote

Instead of feeling bad about failure, instead of voicing our grief in this way, “Sorry Lord I messed up, I’ll do better next time“, what we must say is, “Sorry Lord I left your side. Help ME!” The most spiritual prayer for ourselves we can pray is two words, “help me.” The problem isn’t failure, but instead, failure to rely on the Source of refreshment.

So what I’ve really learned this week is that if we confess our sins to God and ask for forgiveness in humility and faith, it is done. If we don’t forgive ourselves, then we’re basically saying that we don’t believe/trust that God has already forgiven us.

What are you beating yourself up over that you can let go of because God has already washed you clean?

Belinda Forgy (36 Posts)

I’m married to a wonderful man and this is a second marriage for both of us. Between us we have 5 children and 4 grandchildren. After reading countless stories about how small businesses were not able to recover after the Joplin tornado, we feel called to help by offering managed IT services that will secure and backup data and make getting back in business a lot easier if another disaster should occur.