Experiencing God's Forgiveness

I’d like to share with you two things; My personal struggle with guilt, and how I finally found true freedom in Christ. At the age of 6, my father taught me and my brothers about asking Jesus to live in our hearts. At the time, all I understood was “Hell – Bad, Heaven – Good, need Jesus to get to Heaven.”

Thus began my walk with Christ, though it wasn’t until high school age that I started attending church regularly and became active in the community of believers. I participated in the church youth group, took part in ministry, was full of promise, etc… A while later, a season came when I decided to walk down my own path, and this path lead me to being pregnant at 17. It was on my mother’s birthday at a party with the family, when my parents found out. A few days later, my pregnancy inexplicably ended in a spontaneous miscarriage - I was about 7 weeks pregnant.

“Whew! I really dodged that bullet! Ok God, thanks for the ‘do-over’ I’m going to try hard not to mess it up this time.”

I started going to church again, working on being right with God, but no matter what, deep feelings of guilt haunted me. I had knowingly and purposefully walked away from what I knew was God’s plan for me, from His righteous commandments, and tended to my own selfish desires. I had deeply disappointed my parents. And I had found relief with the end of my pregnancy, with what I later realized to be the death of an unborn child, who is very likely walking in heaven with the Lord. I’d like to say that I fully repented and remained chaste until I married, but I didn’t…what must God think of me?

This enormous event in my life colored all of my experiences as a Christian. I always felt like I had something to make up to God (or prove to others in my life who knew of my past). But I never felt like I measured up, never felt l like I was good enough as a friend, a wife, or a mother – always feeling the shame and guilt of my failure at being a committed Christian.

A few years ago, I had my first born child, Benjamin. As many of you know, having children brings you face to face with your true nature. You come to realize just how self serving you can be. My struggle with selfishness, a short temper, impatience, procrastination, lack of spiritual disciplines, etc…became amplified as I realized how important it was not to pass these character flaws to my son. This constant struggle resulted in making me feel full of guilt and wholly unacceptable to God.

So, where does guilt come from? CovenantKeepers.org has an excellent article breaking down the subject of guilt. There are basically 5 sources of guilt:

1. It comes as a natural result of breaking God's Law (Rom. 3:19).
2. It comes as a result of violating your conscience (Rom. 2:15).
3. It comes from your own heart condemning you (1 John 3:20) (Rom. 14:22).
4. It comes from other people condemning you (Psalms 109:31)(Luke 6:37).
5. It comes from the devil condemning you (1 Tim. 3:6) (Rev. 12:10).

It’s no wonder we struggle with guilt!! In a counseling session I had with my pastor few years ago, my tendency to carry an enormous amount of guilt came to light, and he said to me, “You need to repent of this. You are basically saying that Christ’s sacrifice for your sins is not enough, and you’re trying to add to his work on the cross by beating yourself up.” I had never, EVER heard this before. Repent of my guilty feelings? Ok. I’d like to. But I had no idea how to do it.

So how did God bring me around?

11 years ago, I met my husband, Boris, on a blind date, and a few years later we were married. We’ve been together now for 9 years, and we have two children: Benjamin who is 2 ½ and Amelia who is 6 months old.

Boris and I come from drastically different backgrounds. He was born and raised in Russia. His school’s principal was a former KGB agent! Over there, you don’t have a choice to fail. Opportunities don’t come around that often. You do what it takes to get the job done.

Unfortunately, I am the complete opposite of Boris – especially where it concerns academic disciplines. The thought of dropping a class, or accepting a mediocre grade was horrible to him. We clashed many times over my academics and other areas that my procrastination negatively affected.

A time came when I had to take a certification exam for teaching Science in Georgia. As a mother, wife and homemaker, I was too busy to study, and realized I was not ready for the exam. With as much humility as I could conjure, I came to Boris and told him that I was not ready for the text, but for a small fee, I could take it later. He didn’t say anything. I told him that I knew I had let him down. All I could do was humbly ask him to forgive me (which, by the way, is not my nature to do).

Then the most unexpected thing happened….he said “Yes. I forgive you.” I was so dumbfounded! I was scared to ask why, so I decided to leave the room before he gave me a piece of his mind. But I couldn’t shake my feelings of guilt and how I had let him down, and couldn’t really believe that he had out rightly forgiven me. So, I went to him again, and asked, as meekly as possible, “Do you really forgive me?” His simple answer was “Yes.” Perplexed, I busied myself with chores. Lost in my thoughts, I was totally baffled by Boris’s reaction. Where was the stern look, the cold shoulder, the argument about how I had wasted so much time and money - again? You know, the typical stuff we do to our spouses or loved ones when they’ve let us down.

When I’ve done something wrong, I often spend the day putting on a show of how sorry I am. But I was so tired of spending the last few weeks stressing out about the test that I just didn’t want to mope around the rest of the weekend.

So, with a somewhat spiteful attitude, I said to myself, “He said he forgave me, and wheter he likes it or not, I’m just going to accept his forgiveness so I don’t have to feel bad anymore.” And I freed myself to have a nice weekend. I went on with my chores, feeling quite smug, and continuing to ponder Boris’s out of character response.

Then, the Lord spoke to my heart, “Marianne. Your husband forgave you this one little thing, but I have forgiven you for everything.”

I knew how much love it took for Boris to forgive me, and for the first time in my life, I finally realized the enormous amount of love God must have for me, when I consider all the things He has had to forgive me for. Not just my troubled past, but even the day-to-day things, like yelling at my kids, or being impatient with my husband, or not having a good prayer life, you know, just not being a good enough Christian.

All of a sudden, the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders. I really felt physically lighter, which was quite a feat since I was several months pregnant at the time! For the first time in my entire life, I finally felt acceptable to God. I finally felt how vast, and how deep is the love of Christ. I finally believed that He takes me just as I am – because it isn’t about me – it’s about what Jesus did 2,000 years ago. Jesus paid it all. I do not need to add to his perfect and complete work on the cross with my self-inflicting burden of guilt.

So what do I do now when condemning thoughts are bringing me down? I try to think, “God forgave me for that” and just let it roll off my back like water on a duck’s wing. I just let it go. I’m not always successful. Sometimes I forget, and God is good to remind me.

Now that I have reached this major milestone in my Christian life, of finally getting it, finally believing not with my mind, but also with my heart, that God truly forgives me, and loves me, and finds me wholly acceptable, I have realized a new and much greater challenge. That is forgiving others as God has forgiven me.

I need to forgive Boris for not understanding the unique challenges faced by stay-at-home moms. I need to forgive Benji for continually being tempted to turn every long skinny object into a sword. And tougher still, I need to learn to forgive them freely without training them to take on their own burden of guilt.

If you are burdened with guilt, I want to impress upon you that you are basically saying to God, creator of the universe, “You know God, sending your son Jesus to stand in my place and bear my jungement is great, but it just isn’t enough, so I’m going to add to his work of giving up his life by making myself feel really really bad about myself.”

If you are burdened with guilt, there is freedom in Christ, and not just an intellectual acceptance that God forgives you. No. It’s a true, heart-felt, life-changing, burden lifting freedom.

“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1.