Quote:
Originally Posted by NeitherFirstnorLast
And to any of you reading out there, I want to apologize. I want to apologize if I have ever offended any of you. I want to ask your forgiveness if I have ever come across as being "holier than thou". I am not. I am nothing apart from Christ, and I am a far worse sinner than most. I am ugly, and if there's anything beautiful I've ever written or said it was ONLY through Him who saved me. Jesus Christ is Lord.
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Thanks for sharing Ray. I also wanted to apologize to everyone on this board for my spiritual pride. How often I forget that I once was a heathen, dead in my offenses, an object of God's wrath fully deserving of hell. I was and still am fully at the mercy of God's love and forgiveness. I confess many times when tensions flared up my communications were written out of the sake of "being right" and not wholly out of love. I had no right to judge others and when I did so I was expressing attributes of the accuser of the brethren and not that of our Lord Jesus whose ways are gentle and humble.
It's funny I've been going through some of the same feelings as Ray also. After my struggles with also wanting to please God, I've come to know it just comes down to how much we desire God and our intimacy with Him. Many times the enemy will make us feel guilty and not deserving to be in God's presence and will discourage us from spending time with him from feelings of unworthiness. I just want to encourage everyone here that our God still loves us despite our mistakes and is yearning for us to return to him like any Father would. How much we mess up doesn't change the fact that we are still God's children as long as we realize that He is always a Father who wants to be with us.
Our intimacy with God empowers us to walk in faith and please him. Often times we have it the other way around and try to please him to "work" our way up to being children. In His mercy, he see's us as his children first and remembers our sins no more even when we are far from being perfect. God even goes further than that because He knows we don't have the ability to obey him even when we want to, so he gives us his Holy Spirit to empower us when we simply desire to obey him.
Acts 5:32
And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”
God just wants us to turn to him above all else after which his grace empowers us to overcome the world (1 John 5:4) and walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called (Ephesians 4:1).
What a good Father we have!