I’m not a worrier, nor do I typically ruminate over my regrets. I don’t know if that’s a personality trait or a gift from God. Whichever, I’m grateful. I have friends who just can’t let go of their mistakes, and those failures haunt them.
Don’t get me wrong … I have a few big ones in my past and periodically, they pop up and settle into my mind, unwanted guests who don’t want to leave. Instantly, that same feeling of shame floods over me, and I shake my head. How did I let that happen? Why did I make that choice?
But God teaches us through many examples in the Bible that he doesn’t hold our sins against us. In Psalm 103, the Bible tells us “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” To forgive those sins, God sent Jesus to take them on in our place.
When we refuse to let go of them, we are discounting God’s gift to us. We ignore Jesus’s sacrifice. What a slap in the face to God that must be.
My favorite story where Jesus teaches us, yet again, to accept this gift of forgiveness is in the Gospels. In John 21, Jesus has been crucified and resurrected. The disciples are left rudderless. Grieving, the return to what they know, and they set out on the Sea of Galilee to fish. They spent the whole night on the water, but caught nothing.
They spy Jesus on the shore, although they don’t recognize him. He tells them to cast their empty nets back into the water, which they do. They catch so many fish they struggle to haul in the nets and fear the nets will tear at the weight.
John realizes who the man on the shore is and says to Peter, “It is the Lord.”
Almost before the words leave John’s mouth, Peter leaps into the water and swims to Jesus.
Now, remember, only a few days prior, Peter denied Jesus three times, just as Jesus said he would. Try to picture it. If you had just turned your back on someone you’d spent every day with for the past three years, someone you confessed to love … if you’d betrayed him, leaving him to die a horrible death, how would you feel facing him? Would you be able to meet his gaze? Could you accept the hand of friendship he extended?
Jesus does something any of us would be hard pressed to do. He offers Peter his forgiveness, but in such a way to heal Peter from his crushing guilt.
Peter denied Jesus three times.
Three times, his mouth formed words that acted as the hammer nailing the spikes into Jesus’s hands.
To the servant girl in the courtyard of Caiaphas while warming his hands over a charcoal fire in the darkness of that awful night, he says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
At the gateway, he says to another servant girl, “I don’t know the man!”
Then others accuse him for the third time of knowing Jesus, and he swore to them, “I don’t know the man!”
Three times Peter’s words deny Jesus. Just as Jesus told him would happen.
Now, in the breaking light of dawn, before another charcoal fire, Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said. “You know that I love you.”
Again Jesus asks, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”
Jesus didn’t force Peter to acknowledge his failure three times out of spite. He didn’t enjoy raking him over the coals.
Instead, he gave Peter a chance—three times—to tell Jesus what he’d probably longed to say ever since that rooster crowed. “I love you, Jesus. I’m sorry.” Three times, Peter was able to renounce his betrayal. Jesus gave him the opportunity to redeem himself.
And Jesus offers that same forgiveness to us. No matter how far we think we’ve fallen, he waits for us to climb back up to him, extending a hand to help us over the hard parts.
One of my favorite verses in the Bible is this, found in Romans 8.
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Nothing. Nothing can separate us. We cannot do anything so terrible as to make God stop loving us.
So if you struggle with guilt or shame, like I occasionally do, repeat this verse and know God will always love you and accept that helping hand back into his grace.
In my recent book, Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, my main character Derek is a recovering alcoholic. He fights that battle and finds himself in a very low place. But the Holy Spirit reassures him he is still loved.
Was there a time when God reached out to you? Share your story and encourage someone who may be struggling to find her way back.
