"How Sad to Live With the Consequences of FORGIVEN Sin"

"How Sad to Live With the Consequences of FORGIVEN Sin." William Culbertson. 

Have you ever come to that place in your life when you thought you had dealt with all your sin and junk in your past and then realized that you really hadn't? That describes my weekend. 

Let me start at the beginning. I went to a women's ministry leadership conference on Thursday and Friday last week. I went with the intention of learning some fun things to add to our women's ministry. I didn't go in with the intention that God was going to rock my world and change my life, why not? That is another story about how I don't go to things expecting God to do a MAJOR work in my life, but we are working on one thing at a time here. 

We had a choice of what classes we wanted to go to and I picked Maximizing Your Ministry. I thought that would be the perfect class for me. There was also another class called Ministering to Your Women In Crises, and I thought it looked OK but really wasn't for me. Most of you know, for awhile I was a crises on wheels and thought that I didn't need to attend THAT class. But I met a sweet lady from a area church and as we sat through the first class of Maximizing your Ministry, we both felt it was not what we were looking for so we changed and headed unexpectantly to the ministering to women in crises. As luck would have it (grin over that statement) there was only one seat left and it was right in the front of the lady teaching. I went to sit there and asked if anyone was sitting there. The lady behind me sad no, the lady that was sitting there moved because she kept getting called on. Oh great, here we go. 

As this lady started her class, she was just a doll and I loved her from the first second. She was dressed so cute and had on the best, quality shoes (HAHA) I have ever seen. I was hooked from the moment she started. Her name is Pat Layton and she has just written a book called Surrendering The Secret. (www.surrenderingthesecret.com) It is a bible study for post abortion trauma. As I listened to her teach us how to deal with women in crises. She said so many things that I needed to hear. Beth Moore says over and over again that before we are ready to minister to others we had to deal with our own stuff. Ladies, let me tell you, I thought I had dealt with my own stuff.  Sitting there I had to come to grips with the fact that I hadn't totally done that. There was a lot of stuffing down and not truly healing. God was showing me that it was my pride and self-protection (you will hear that word from me lots in the next few weeks, I am sure. After the leadership training, we went to Living Proof Life with Beth Moore and her topic leads right into all of what God was showing me. More on that later, there is so MUCH, it is all running together.YEAH GOD) 

Anyway, back to where I was, God was telling me that I needed to forgive myself of past sins and not act like they weren't there. Not thinking about them doesn't mean always mean forgiveness and healing has taken place. We have to deal with our sin and lay it at the cross. I realized that I only wanted to tell parts of my testimony and not all of it. I didn't want to admit to ALL that I had done wrong. I was just pretending it wasn't there. I had to text my parents in the middle and apologize and ask them for forgiveness for all that I put them through - some stuff they knew about and some, praise the Lord, they don't. My Mom was so sweet and had already forgiven me and went on to let me know that there was no shame in Jesus. That my not accepting Jesus' forgiveness was telling Him that the cross was not enough. Oh Lord, what a price He paid, the least I could do was accept that forgiveness. 

So, this morning, as I was reading my bible reading. I was in Psalms, and my heart just jumped out in my skin when I got to Psalm 51. Now I have read Psalm 51 before many times, I have sang it, prayed it. But this morning, I read it, as if it was a text (grin) to me. It was my personal prayer to the Lord. All in one psalm. It wrapped up everything my heart and soul needed to say to Him.  I wrote out that prayer this morning in my journal making it personal as if it was from me to Him (with a thanks to David for his words and a praise to the Lord that He allowed David to write it as an example to us). 

After doing that I opened my With the Word by Warren Wiersbe and this was the quote he had under his commentary of Psalm 51. "How sad to live with the consequences of FORGIVEN sin." I thought that summed it up better than I could. God has offered us so much at the cross, a forgiven life, let's start living it, bask in His forgiveness and as we do we can then do, what God has called me and each of us to do,  Psalms 51: 13 "Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you." My new life calling! and then David goes on to say, "O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise." (Ps. 51:15) My other life calling, a life of praise!

Let's live today as Jesus intended it when He died on the cross, to offer His perfect life for our imperfect one! Amen and Amen.