Your past mistakes do not define you.
I repeat, your past does not define you.
You know where your identity is found?
In Jesus Christ.
The enemy loves to attack our identity to put us in a spot of shame and paralyze us in fear. When you are fully pursuing God’s will of course he is going to attack you. You are changing the world and building the kingdom of heaven. You are entering what used to be his territory and saving lives and making an eternal impact.
We all make mistakes and we all have sinned. Some of us may even sinned this morning. But you know what holds true and steadfast through that? God & his promises.
His love never wavers.
You are forgiven.
You are his beloved child.
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His promises will always remain the same.
The enemy doesn’t want you to get free, he wants to tie you down in condemnation and shame… He wants you to hold onto the sin you committed and stay there. He definetly does not want you to confess, repent, and walk in freedom. When we know we are forgiven we can continue to pursue our God given purpose.
Is there something that you are holding onto today? Something that Jesus is waiting for you to lay at his feet so you can finally walk in freedom?
There are times when we need to ask God to help us leave the past where it belongs, IN THE PAST. If you are struggling with something specific, remember where God has brought you from to where you are now. He is faithful, his love is relentless, and there is nothing he can’t do.
You are forgiven.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”-1 John 1:9 (NIV)
Let go of your past, it doesn’t define you.
“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”-Philippians 3:13-14 (NIV)
Your identity is found in Jesus.
“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God-“-John 1:12 (NIV)
The old you has passed away. You are a new creation.
“For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”-2 Corinthians 5:14-21 (NIV)
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