Learning to Forgive yourself

   I've recently been able to hear two sides of one story. Both from very different perspectives. God has thrown me into this situation, and it's neat to see him working. Anyways, I was talking to one of the people in the situation. He said he was struggling with forgiving himself.

  When I heard that, I didn't really know what to say. Forgiving yourself is probably one of the hardest steps you'll have to do in asking for forgiveness. I thought about it moment before answering what he said. He had done/is doing everything he can to fix this. He asked God for forgiveness. He asked the other people involved in the situation for forgiveness... Yet, he was struggling to forgive himself for what he did. 

   I know what he's dealing with it. Forgiving yourself for pain that you caused in the lives of others as well your own life, is far from easy. The devil uses that. Satan wants us to think that we're the problem. That we can't and will never amount to anything. He drags us down and tries his best to discourage us from doing this. He tears down our own self-esteem and tries to cause our minds to believe lies.

   You feel stuck. You made a mistake, and people remind you of that daily. You want to move on and be forgiven and forgive yourself, but how can you when the voices of others and voices inside your head are reminding you that you did do that bad thing... That you did fail.

  For me, personally, forgiving myself for mistakes I've made in the past is difficult. Truly. I often find myself wishing I done things differently in past. Done them better, and maybe then I wouldn't have hurt people in the process... When I start thinking about my past and focusing on only the mistakes I've made I tend to forget the miracle. The testimony that was made from the mistakes... 

God uses everything. Nothing is wasted. We all make mistakes and feel like failures sometimes, but knowing that God wastes NOTHING in our lives is reassuring.

  I think, once I stop focusing on everything I did wrong and all of the mistakes that I've made in my past, it gets me thinking about Christ and how amazing it is that he works everything together for good. 

   When I struggle with forgiving myself now, I try not to focus on the mistake I made, but rather that Jesus has already forgiven me for it and so I should forgive myself and try to do it differently next time. God, the creator of everything, loved us so much that he sent his only son, Jesus, to die for us on the cross. God has already forgiven us for everything wrong we've done and everything we will do wrong. 

   In order to forgive yourself, you need to come to place where you realize you can't change what happened and you don't want to do it again. You have to realize that the God has already forgiven you and rest in that peace. 

   You can't change the mistake you made and it's hard to erase the guilt you feel from it. But living in the past and dwelling on that one mistake you made last week, a year ago, or even a decade ago isn't good. You need to forgive yourself. To realize that God loves you no matter what you've done in your past, all that is done. Leave the past in the past, which is where it belongs. 

   Focus on trusting God. Ask him to give you a peace that surpasses all understanding and helps give you the ability to forgive yourself and move on. Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting. It just simply means- choosing to move on and leaving the past where it belongs and accepting the grace that God offered to you by his death and resurrection on the cross.