Separating Yourself

Jesse (March 4th, 2006)

I think the greatest battle in every man is loneliness and longing for love. Other times I think for those of us who believe in God, the other greatest battle is self guilt. When you feel guilty because you do something you know to be wrong but try to rationalize it as okay you are deceiving yourself. One of my most difficult things to deal with is self-guilt. I always beat myself up, for example; if I have a bad attitude or was mean to someone. I keep breaking communication with God because I feel too guilty to talk to him! I've found it difficult to accept that God loves me when I don't feel lovable.

When you stop communicating and praying to God you are hurting yourself. When you don't speak with God because of guilt, you are eliminating the purpose of the cross - to forgive sin! It seems so simple to say, "Yes Lord I believe you love me". But if you don't act His love with your attitude towards people then you aren't really accepting it, because God's love will reflect in our attitudes towards other people. It's discouraging sometimes, and by all means we fall extremely short from God's perfection, but God never criticizes those who try!

I wrote this article because I thought this might help you as it's helped me. I had been beating myself up so much and just hiding my face in my pillow from guilt as if time will make things right. So I had a bit of a revelation in the way I think.

God loves us unconditionally. Even when we sin he still loves us, but he hates our sin. So how can God love us when we sin?

Here's what helps me:
I keep this picture in my head of myself as a little boy, and then to the side a dark dusty rag which represents my sin. I separate myself as God sees me from the way I see me. God sees me as that little innocent child, but I kept seeing myself as this person wearing that dark dusty rag of sin. So I separate the two in the mind and accept the fact that this is how God sees me. This doesn't mean you should live a double life where you can go into sin mode and back into an innocent mode! That won't bless you!

This means you should separate your sin from your self image. Accept how God sees you, you will learn to love yourself when you realize how God sees you.

We all sin and certainly everyone has to have regrets about things they have done. We need to stop putting on our gloomy layer of sin and start receiving God! Just look at the verse above, you have to start believing God with a good attitude. And God wants you to have faith in Him in order for Him to bless you!

Hold on, read that verse again. Did you hear that? Godly Sorrow brings no regret. When you are feeling guilty it may be the Holy Spirit convicting you. Ultimately it will develop stronger character and faith in you by the grace of God which brings no regret!

God bless you; let's start believing for something good! I'm sorry I am not that well at explaining things, but I hope this is more clear to you than how it sounds when I read it over.