When it comes to receiving forgiveness, I have often heard Christians say, “I know that God has forgiven me, but I can’t forgive myself for what I did.” That kind of statement is a real deception and snare from the enemy. You and I can’t afford to think about ourselves anything different from what God thinks about us, and this is critically true in the area of forgiveness. If the enemy can use past failure to cause us to beat ourselves up, then we will never be able to walk in childlike faith believing that we can know the fullest expression of God’s favor because we will think we don’t deserve it. Any time you refuse to either accept God’s forgiveness or you refuse to come into agreement with Him and forgive yourself; then you simply aren’t embracing the full measure of God’s grace and its influence.
Hebrews 8:12
For I will demonstrate my mercy to them and will forgive their evil deeds, and never remember again their sins.”
This verse in Hebrews 8 is one of the great promises of the new covenant. God has the capacity to not remember our sins, and therefore since we have the mind of Christ through our union with Jesus, then we don’t have the right to not come into agreement with Him and what He thinks about us. Here is a great quote from a writer about 150 years ago; “Be the one that has learned to see in the grave of your Lord the burial of all your sins, with their burning remembrances, their bitter accusations, and their stinging reproaches, and so entering into God’s thoughts about you, you’ve learned to forgive yourself in God’s forgiveness of you.” Dare to believe that you don’t have to keep hating yourself for what you did because God doesn’t. We spend way too much time remembering what God forgets and forgetting what God remembers. God forgets your sins and remembers your weaknesses. Get off of your own back! It’s too big a load to carry if you want to walk in the Spirit.