"Thank you sir, may I please have another?"

Have you ever seen the movie Animal House? (I don't recommend it) There is a scene where Kevin Bacon is receiving spankings from a Fraternity paddle and he says, “Thank you sir, may I have another”. It would be nice if in real life when we receive “spankings” we felt so good about them that we could say thank you Sir, or thank you Lord please give me some more. You know what I am talking about if you have lived for God for any period of time you have experienced that feeling in your spirit, conviction.

I feel like I have been receiving some spankings here over the last week or so. They kind that make me feel really badly about myself. God every so gently reminds me that the attitude I had was rebellious, that my heart was ugly towards someone. It makes me feel awful about myself. Last week I said something that wasn’t necessary, that I should not have said. God gently nudged me into a place of repentance the next morning. Sometimes what happens to me, I am sure it never happens to anyone else, but I start to really feel guilty and ashamed of how I acted. I begin to think things like “I suck at life” or “I don’t really have any place to minister to people when I can’t even keep my attitude right or my mouth shut”.

I realized something last week as I was preparing to teach a precepts class, I repented and you know what? God forgave me. Why am I continuing on in my pity party feeling guilty?

This is what our enemy on this earth does to us, he takes what God intends to gently lead us into repentance and he makes us feel so badly about it that we stop our forward movement. We get halted in our guilt and we become statues, refusing to move past the sin that we have already repented of!

In my mind I think we must look funny, sitting and wallowing in our mistakes when God is up in Heaven having forgotten them, encouraging us to get up and move on. He sent Jesus here to die for our sins and be resurrected so that we can be free from our sins. That means when we repent and turn from our sin we can move on with our life. Sure there may be consequences to our actions, in my case I usually have to call someone and apologize for something I said, but we can do that and move on.

I can actually feel the guilt trying to take over my mind sometimes, pushing me to think on my mistake, to think about how stupid it was and pushing me to get stuck right there. We have to make the decision to move forward, to forgive ourselves as God has forgiven us and keep doing what we are called to do. We are a spiritual people and there is a very real enemy on this earth that would like more than anything for Christians to get trapped feeling guilty and stop doing what God is asking them to do here on earth. We need to awaken our spirits to what is really going on.

I know for me today I am going to choose to allow the forgiveness Jesus offered me to cover my mind. Today I am choosing to ask the Lord to forgive my bad attitude, to forgive my offended heart and to help me move on. I have faith that God makes me right in his sight, I believe that what Jesus did on the cross accomplished it all, that it was great enough and strong enough to cover my sin. It is in faith in Jesus that we can be free from guilt and shame.

So today I hope you will let yourself off the hook. I know He already has.

“This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight.
This is accomplished from start to finish by faith.
As Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”
Romans 1:17