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Deuteronomy 4:29 NLT

'But from there you will search again for the Lord your God. And if you search for him with all your heart and soul, you will find him.'

While specific sin requires contrition and confession, penitence is a continuous state of being. The word means ‘repenting’. This is the condition within which we live as Christians, for true repentance is a consistent awareness of the reality that each one of us lives by grace. I find that my natural inclination when it comes to a prayer of confession might be to reference some single action that I recognise as being ‘wrong’ and which weighs heavy upon me. The ‘wrong’, whatever it might be, from the trivial to the serious, is no more than the consequence of the fault line that runs through each one of our fallen and therefore fractured lives.

As I reflect upon the journey behind me, I can describe many seasons through which I proved a disappointment to myself. Despite having confessed my sins and receiving God’s forgiveness, I can be robbed of the life of God by living in the shattered remnants of my past. God forgives and forgets.

Others who experienced me in such seasons find it much harder to forgive and forget. I might walk free by the grace of God, yet they become voices of remembrance that can only lead me to an unhealthy visitation of that which no longer exists, for God has forgotten it. Sadly, I have to move on from exposure to such people, for I cannot enter into what lies before me within God’s grace if I am weighed down by the false perceptions of others. Such perceptions act as shackles restricting my walk of faith, which is the way of the penitent. Mindful of God’s grace, I live aware of my fracture yet God’s deliverance, and so forgive myself as surely as God forgives me.

QUESTION: Do you still feel shackled by past ‘wrongs’?

PRAYER: Redeeming Father, thank you for the grace which has rescued me and forgiven me.