Proverbs 31

Did you cringe when you saw that title? Ah, the woman I felt I could never live up to…

My sweet husband made a beautiful frame for me some years ago & had printed in ornate script     verses 28-29. It hangs in our foyer. When he presented it to me I burst into tears. I could not receive those words of honor.

I have lived in the pit of regret. The life & sins I have chosen have deeply wounded the people I hold most dear & I cannot even claim ignorance. I had known God’s saving grace, claimed His salvation but had fallen away big time. For years I chose my own way with disastrous consequences. Thankfully, by His grace, He has brought this prodigal back home.  But the deep shame I felt carried over into this new life God mercifully gave me. Yes, I knew intellectually that I was saved from my sins – past, present & future. But to walk in that freedom has taken quite some time. It was as if that constant self-flogging was deserved penance to prove to those that I had sinned against would “right the wrong”.

This quote was the beginning of healing for me:

Regret for a sinful past will remain until we truly believe that for us in Christ that sinful past no longer exists. The man in Christ has only Christ’s past and that is perfect and acceptable to God. In Christ he died, in Christ he rose, and in Christ he is seated within the circle of God’s favored ones. He is no longer angry with himself because He is no longer self-regarding, but Christ regarding: hence there is no place for regret.

A.W. Tozer

I taped it to my bathroom mirror & read it to myself every day memorizing it to drown out the voice in my head saying “that was the unforgivable sin”. And every time that voice sounded again I would refuse it with scripture:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, (s)he is a new creation: the old has gone, the new has come. 2 Cor 5:17

And, ouch, did he say “self-regarding”? Was I thinking about “self” when I chose to continue to wallow in this pit? God is so good. He doesn’t leave us here.

Psalm 40: 1-3     I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud & mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.

Does the memory of my past still sting? Sure. Do others want to hold it against me? Sometimes. But I can now fully appreciate that frame & those words.  “To God be the glory, great things He hath done”.

 

Love, Lory