Today’s title is taken from a book by Joff Day about forgiving others. The premise behind the book is that in forgiving others and releasing them of any debt they owe you, you are then free to be yourself without any ties to the past. It is a book that I have found helpful in the past.
But today, I want to turn it around a little. Yes, forgiving people is a key part of being a Christian and being in a right relationship with God, but possibly more key is forgiving yourself. Yesterday I posted about believing in your identity as a child of God and not in anything else. Today, I wanted to briefly write about something that can get in the way.
Yesterday I wrote about the difference about making a mistake and being a mistake, about failing at something and about being a failure (basically, what you do is not who you are). But sometimes when we fail or when we make a mistake, it can leave an impression on us even if that’s not where our identity is. We can be disappointed in ourselves, or we can kick ourselves and tell ourselves to do better. We can be our own worst critic. The thing is, God has already forgiven us for mistakes and failures where we did wrong, and he sees the bigger picture and knows that sometimes it wasn’t our fault (although we may still blame ourselves). This blame, whether we deserve it or not, is not helpful. It can hang around and draw us backwards, make us look the the past and predict a negative future. It isn’t healthy for our own self worth or for our relationship with God.
God has already forgiven you. Jesus has already paid the price. To not forgive yourself is to not accept God’s forgiveness. It is easy to say, harder to live out. But you must try. And just as it is a process and a choice to forgive others, so it is with ourselves. We are forgiven. We are loved. We just need to realise it and believe it. And when we can get to a point of forgiving ourselves, and releasing ourselves from some impossible debt or expectation, we can be free to live our lives, loving ourselves and receiving God’s love as we should.
This advent, if you can, set aside some time to reflect on where you are being hard on yourself, on where you need to give yourself a break, and just be kind and forgive yourself. God already has.
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