God's Forgiveness: Embracing Saints and Overcoming Monsters

Recognize the monster within yourself and confront it.

Confess your sins to God and to yourself.

Ask for God's forgiveness and strength to change.

Keep working at overcoming your flaws to achieve saintliness.

The World of Saints Often we see the world as being full of saints and monsters, good guys and bad guys, Hitlers and Thereses. Along with that, most of us would like others to see us as being the good guys. But the bitter truth for virtually all of us is that we're not so good as we would like to think we are, and that nagging truth can make us quite miserable. The apostle Paul described it eloquently when he wrote, The good that I'd like to do, I don't do, but the evil that I don't want to do, I end up doing. This frustration is, I believe, universal. Up close and personal, there is some monster in all of us, perhaps some more than others, but it's there nevertheless. And it is, of course, why we all need forgiveness. Sure, we cover for one another, and we especially cover for ourselves in an effort to paint a saintly picture. But if our lives are to be more than a depressing lie, and if we are going to ever become truly saintly, we need to come to terms with our own worst side. Part of the secret to saintliness is honesty about our dishonesty. We would all benefit from a long hard look in the mirror to determine where more effort is needed And it is an unwillingness to do that which has created some of the worst monsters The Bible says if we confess our sins God is able to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Some of what God may give us is the power to actually change, but some of it may just be plain forgiveness as well. There's not one of us who does not need some heavy doses of forgiveness at times. When I think of the number of times that I've been impatient with people, grouchy, beyond justification, I often get depressed, feeling like the monster that I am in those moments of arrogance and indifference to the feelings of others. And when I think about how little progress I've been able to make over the years in overcoming that one great besetting sin, I get even more depressed. It's such an amazing paradox that God has seen fit to do anything with me at all because of it, yet I cannot deny that he has used me, and that, in company with other great supporters, I have been able to proclaim a message of truth that needs to be heard around the world in these last days. What a privilege! But how does that fit in with the monster that I can be at times? If anything good can be said about this monster feature that plagues so many of us, it is that our willingness to confess it and confront it actually opens the door to us being more useful to God Jesus worst enemies were those who had been deceived by their own self They wanted to believe they were saints to the exclusion of just how terrible they really could be Jesus called them whitewashed tombs, full of rotting corpses. And in fact, those same people literally ordered the torture and execution of the innocent and perfect Son of God, in an effort to prop up their own delusions about just how righteous they really were. We must never give up trying to be perfect, but neither should we ever be deceived into thinking that we have arrived. One of my greatest Bible heroes as a teenager was King David. Yet he had a man killed so that he could marry the man's wife. Murder...adultery... This great hero of biblical proportions was a murderer and an adulterer. It is said, however, that King David wrote one of his greatest psalms in remorse for what he had done. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with your free spirit. Are you feeling remorse for the monstrous things that you have done Don sweep that monster under the carpet Confess your sins to God and to yourself Pray for strength to change and courage to make amends I would like to say that you will be a totally changed person, never making the same mistakes again. Hopefully, in some big ways, that will be true for many of you. But there will always be some things that still need to be confessed, that still need to change if you are going to continue growing spiritually. Isn't that ironic? The way to saintliness actually lies in being able to confront our own demons and to ask for God's forgiveness for the many ways in which we have given in to them. Between us and God, what matters most is that we be able to recognize the monster and just keep working at overcoming it. It is this ability to confess our sinfulness that ultimately leads to God's forgiveness, and it's our delusion about how perfect we are that blocks it. So let's keep trying to be perfect, but let's stay aware of how far short we fall as well. Without God's grace, not one of us will make it. I hope this video has helped you. If it has, could you give it a thumbs up And please subscribe if you haven't already done so. Thank you for listening.

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