Author: jamie

By Posted on Posted in forgiveness 1 Comment Tagged with

Psalm 32

1 Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
2 Blessed is the one whose sin the LORD does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.

3 When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.

5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin.

We are truly blessed to have our sins forgiven by God. We don’t deserve to be forgiven, but He loves us. His Son has paid the penalty for our sins, so we are free from condemnation.

I will dare to say that we are not truly blessed, however, until we fully open our hearts to receive His forgiveness. Not until we honestly believe that we are forgiven.  Often we know in our heads that our sins are not held against us, but deep in our hearts we still feel shame. We don’t think we deserve the forgiveness, so we hold God’s gift of redemption at arm’s length. In doing this, we forfeit the blessing of peace, joy, and living a blessed, happy life.

I’ll go one step further and say that the reason we do not receive God’s forgiveness is because we have not forgiven ourselves. We have feelings of disappointment, anger, even self-loathing toward ourselves. When our hearts carry these feelings, we often project them on to God or other people in our lives. We begin to believe that we ARE the way we feel about ourselves. We begin to believe that others see us the way that we see ourselves. We assume that God and others are judging us… all because we have not forgiven ourselves.

The Lord has challenged me to take action. Visualize an act of self-forgiveness. Write myself a letter. Be done with the failures I am still holding on to in some ceremonial way. Only then will I stop projecting my self-condemnation onto others and finally be released from the fear that others are judging me.

Read what God says about us in Ephesians 1:3-4…

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.  For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

Someone recently explained to me that the word “holy” here means sacred. The word “blameless” means unblameable. You and I are sacred to God. We are unblameable once we confess the sins and failures of our lives. We are unblameable because Jesus died for each and every one of the times that we fall short.  Though Jesus took our sins upon Himself when He died, the bible says that He despised the shame. He refused to take on the shame of our sins.

However, the enemy has convinced us to pick up that shame. He continually tells us that it belongs to us. What a lie… a wretched bondage that the enemy has created!

Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven!

Will you lay down the shame today? Will you forgive yourself and experience the blessedness of Psalm 32?   That is what God desires for you and me today!

By Posted on Posted in breakthrough, God's provision, God's word No Comments

I was reminded of this fact regarding creation this morning:

By the word of the LORD the heavens were made,
their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.

Psalm 33:6,9

Each thing that the Lord made at the foundation of time was spoken into existence. His very word has the power to create.

The Lord also reminded me this morning that He is not finished creating. He is not finished speaking things into existence. He gently whispered to my spirit that He will speak stability, unity, wholeness, and intimacy into my life. How long have I tried to manufacture these things in my life? I have only succeeded in producing short-term counterfeits.

My breakthrough will come when He utters the name of each of my needs. When the time is right, His voice will usher in the provision and transformation that has been on his agenda for so long.

He knows your need. He knows that you are powerless to bring it to pass. Draw near to Him and wait for Him to speak…

By Posted on Posted in breakthrough, spiritual lows, surrender 3 Comments

Have you ever felt stuck? Sick and tired of your current position, too wise to go back, but too scared to go forward? Maybe you have the courage to move forward, but find it impossible?

That’s me today. Make that for the last month or more. I know that God wants to do a specific work in me. While there’s a part of me that wants Him to do it… most of me is scared to death.

The Lord showed me recently that this is probably the most significant work that He will ever do in me. That is why the enemy has worked so hard to keep me stuck. Until God does this work, so many of His plans and promises are on hold. It involves changing my “default setting” as I like to say.

Because of hurts in my past, I behave a certain way in relationships. I feel so powerless to change that about myself. I’ve tried making adjustments myself, but it never lasts long. I return to my old “setting” and I don’t experience everything that God wants for me in my relationships with others.

Lately, I have felt so stuck. So powerless to move forward. Even angry. In some ways, I am miserable and I feel like I can’t do a dog-gone thing about it.

Last night, I met with my small group and the Lord spoke two things to me very clearly. The first was that I am believing a lie. The enemy has convinced me that the change God desires for me is impossible. I have been saying over and over in my head, in my prayers, to my small group last night that I cannot change. God says that this is a lie.

The truth is that I don’t know how to change. However, God knows how to change me. I’ve been so busy believing that I can’t change and being mad at God because I can’t change, that I forgot to let God do His thing.

That brings me to the second thing that God revealed to me last night. The answer to my whole problem is surrender.

Maybe you hate that answer as much as I do. I had all of the responses you’d expect from a two-year-old last night… and even a bit this morning. But I know what I need to do.

What does surrender look like for you? For me, it means getting face down on the living room floor at some wee hour of the morning when the rest of the house is sound asleep. It means laying it all down, crying it all out, and falling in an exhausted heap next to my mountain of snotty balled-up tissues. It means laying face down before my God with all of my excuses, motives, and anger confessed. It means saying every last thing that I have stored up in my heart, and then being really quiet before the One who loves me from the top of my head, through the dysfunction of my heart and mind, all the way down to my feet that keep running away.

I need to get face down and surrender. I didn’t have the courage to do it this morning, but it’s coming. The Lord kept breathing Genesis 22 in my ear this morning. When I turned there, everything that God had been saying to me was confirmed. I need to lay my heart down as a sacrifice before Him. I need to entrust my heart to Him, knowing that He will give it back to me in much better shape. I need to hand Him my heart so He can change me.

I just have to find the courage get face down. I just have to surrender.