Forgiving Again and Again and Again

I shared part of my story with a group at church today and realized that forgiveness is a choice not made once, but over and over again.  I chose a long time ago to forgive myself for my bad decisions, but I find myself having to be reminded that I forgave myself.  I know now that every time I start to get mad at myself again I have to forgive again.  Yes I have to forgive myself for the same thing again.  Hopefully one day I will be done with forgiving myself for fornicating.  For anyone who doesn't know what fornication means it's having sex while unmarried.  I stopped doing that a long time ago, but I still have to keep forgiving myself for it.  There are other things in my life too that keep climbing back into my consciousness and emotions, but I just remind myself of the free forgiveness that I already have from the Lord and the forgiveness that I am maintaining for myself.  If any of you are like me, even though you say you forgive someone or yourself, you don't feel forgiving right away.  That's okay.  You can still choose to walk in forgiveness and remind yourself what you have chosen.  When it comes to emotions and moral stances it's not enough to make a decision we must also maintain it.  I am working on keeping my forgiveness fresh and clean, well polished and shining the reflection of the savior. 

I think the issue with forgiving myself is the feeling that I don't deserve it.  Since when has this been the preface of forgiveness?  Forgiveness doesn't say "you are good" it says " you are guilty, but God is good." Because God is good I can forgive people even if they never ask for it.  Because God is good I can make a mistake and still call myself blessed and highly favored of the Lord.  Because God is good he has already paid all of my debts and because God is good he has paid all of yours too. 

This brings me to the scripture on my blog today.  It says that God has given us a covenant to love each other like he loves us.  Read John 13:35 in the Bible. Our forgiveness has to be stronger then our sense of entitlement or "justice".  Christ has already justified us and forgiven us.  So what do we do when issues keep coming up and reminding us of how mad or hurt we were?  We forgive again, and again, and again until it sticks.  The feelings might follow, but even if they don't we will have learned the discipline of forgiveness by the spirit of God.   Ask yourself as I now ask myself, do you believe the forgiveness that you have today?  If we can only grasp on to the amazing forgiveness that we have then we could forgive ourselves and others more fully.  Jesus Christ is sitting at the right hand of God the father interceding on our behalves to be a witness to the payment of our sin debts.  When something that we did, said, or thought comes up Jesus says "I'm finished with that.  It's forgiven."  Hallelujah!!!!   So, being angry at myself for being wreckless with my body and forever changing my future....I'm done with that.  It's forgiven.  Forgiven, forgiven, and forgiven in Jesus name Amen.