Today with just a couple of weeks to go before Christmas and knowing this is the season of peace and joy, I am battling with feeling bad about myself and hating the fact that I never seem to change despite my best intentions. These feelings are springing out of a whole host of things buzzing round my mind, people I’ve failed to be in touch with, promises I’ve not kept, lack of organisation meaning I’ve got so many unfinished jobs on the go, silly things like not writing my Christmas cards earlier and now being overwhelmed.
The closer we get to Christmas, the deeper that shame feeling gets. It is an insidious despising of who I am. The enemy does love to tell us how bad we are and I find it’s so easy to get pulled into that and agree with him. But Lamentations 3:22 says that God’s mercies are new every morning. Will I take that on board? It’s vital that I do, because otherwise it becomes an identity issue, not just that I have failed in some way, but that I myself am a failure.
When these feelings hit me, I often feel that everyone else will be so much better than me, but of course we all fall down, make mistakes and mess up. As Paul puts it in Romans 3:23 ‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ We are all weak and flawed, BUT ‘we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that comes by Christ Jesus.’ (24)
Jesus did everything for me so that I can live as an unashamed person. He doesn’t want me or any of us to be struggling under a weight of feeling a failure but to know the heart joy, that because of what He’s done, we can live ‘justified’ - just as if I’ve never sinned. Will I live knowing I am forgiven and made beautiful in His eyes? He delights in turning around our mistakes and bringing beauty out of our ashes. I need to choose to let go of the feelings of being bad and choose to believe He forgives and loves me. If I take that to heart, it will be so much easier to put right my failures because I will be facing them with a new perspective that I am always forgiven, always loved.
Lord Jesus thank you for your amazing love that you so much want each of us to live free from condemnation that you carried it yourself so we could be free. Forgive me for wallowing in a sense of being bad. You’ve made me beautiful and just as if I’ve never sinned. Thank you with all my heart. I choose to believe and live in that truth today. May all others in a similar struggle know that joy too. Amen.
Tracy
