How Can I Forgive Myself?

INTRODUCTION

• Throughout the years, you will hear a lot of sermons on forgiveness. We are told we are supposed to forgive others as Jesus has forgiven us. We are told we are supposed to forgive and forget the evils others have perpetrated against us!

• One sermon that we do not hear a lot deals with another part of forgiveness; forgiving ourselves!

• I believe one of the most difficult things we can do is to forgive ourselves.

• We know we are supposed to forgive other people, sometimes it is hard to do, but we can usually come around to doing it.

• Forgiving ourselves is a different issue. Now we are the one who has hurt other people, we are the one who feels like we failed as a parent, or a husband or wife. We are the one who allowed substance abuse to ruin the lives of other people.

• We KNOW we have done wrong, hurt other people, destroyed the lives of others, and we want to hang on to the guilt of what we have done because we feel like by hanging on to the guilt, we are somehow making what we have done wrong, right.

• When we have sinned against others, it is hard for us to feel like we should be forgiven. Guilt overtakes us and drags us down for a lifetime. Sometimes we have done things to people who have since died and we were not able to try to make it right with them, so we carry the guilt with us feeling that somehow that will make up for past sins we have committed.

• How many people do you know what allowed not being able to forgive themselves destroy or seriously hurt their lives? Maybe you are struggling with forgiving yourself today over some past problem.

• Today we are going to look at how we can forgive ourselves. There comes a time when we need to be able to forgive ourselves and learn from our mistakes and then get on with life. Carrying guilt with you will not fix anything and will only hurt you. It will not change the past, it will only hurt you. It will not make the past right, it will only hurt you.

• Let’s look at Psalm 103:10-14 as we learn how to forgive ourselves!

• READ PSALM 103:10-14

SERMON

I. ADJUST YOUR VIEW OF GOD (10-14)

• One of the things that I believe keeps us from allowing ourselves to be forgiven is the fact we have some wrong views about God.

• If we are going to be able to forgive ourselves, we must first adjust our view about God.

• We feel like God is out to get us, or that He does not love us. Maybe we think God is some mean guy who likes to extract punishment out of us.

• I believe we all have some negative images of God we have acquired from our childhood, church communities or other “authority” figures.

• When we look at the passage in Psalms, we can see a few things about God that will allow us to adjust our view about God.

God Is Not…

1. A CRUEL judge (10)

• The passage tells us that God has not rewarded us according to our iniquities.

• May of us think that God cannot wait to pay us back for the wrongs we have done.

• How many of you parents want to punish your children? It breaks our hearts to have to do it. God is the same way. I am thankful that God does not give us what we deserve.

• If a person steals and gets caught, the judge will sentence him according to the law. If you do the crime, you will do the time.

• God is not waiting to drop the guilty verdict upon you. If you stand before God guilty, it is because YOU refused to accept what Jesus has done to pay for your sins and do your time for you.

• 1 TIMOTHY 2:3-4 says, “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

• A cruel judge would be glad to see you pay for your sins, God has done everything He can to make sure you do not have to pay for your sins.

2. A LEGAL ACCOUNTANT (10)

• I think we believe that God is a God who NEVER forgives and NEVER forgets.

• An accountant is someone who keeps the books for a business. It is the accountant’s job to not overlook any money coming in to or going out of the business. You want your accountant to be meticulous in their work.