I feel like a lot of people are carrying around low-grade guilt all the time, especially if you’re a “church person”. I grew up in the church and I’ve always suspected deep down that God is disappointed with me. In my head, I’m not doing enough. That there’s always something more that I could be doing. What about my neighbors? Have I evangelized to all of my neighbors? Have I given all my money to the poor? Am I spending six hours in Bible study every morning? What about the time I spend in prayer? Maybe you can you relate? I can make this a never-ending list, but the point is when we focus on the list we completely ignore what God is trying to tell us.
It becomes “What can I do?” instead of “What has God already done?”
God has never asked us to be “good enough” to have a relationship with Him. In the Bible when the word “accuser” is used, it’s never used for Jesus. It’s used for our enemy. Yes, there’s a spiritual enemy and he’s the one that’s making us feel this way, taking away from what Jesus has done.
Jesus is our advocate. He loves you. He’s not impressed by you. If you pray six hours a day He isn’t like, “OK. Now I love you.” No- He already loves you. We get to love Jesus simply because He has loved us first.
When we feel guilty or ashamed, it is important to remember how God sees us. God might not like what we just did, but He doesn’t just see the sin. He sees the whole package, and He STILL loves us. The issue is that we’re not seeing ourselves through truth. God sees this larger picture of us. And it’s a good picture.
God takes on all of that shame, guilt, and pain and sees us as His beautiful child whom He loves.
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