ARE YOU BREATHING THE SWEET AIR OF FORGIVENESS?

Today's promise: God is always willing to forgive us

Are you breathing the sweet air of forgiveness?

Though our hearts are filled with sins, you forgive them all.

Psalm 65:3 NLT

The sweet air of forgiveness

If you doubt God's forgiveness, allow the words of Romans 8:32 to strengthen your faith. If God gave up his only Son for you, so surely he will not hold back his forgiveness!

Since God did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won't God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else?

God's forgiveness is different than human forgiveness. Isaiah 43:25 declares that when God forgives sin, he forgets them forever.

"I — yes, I alone — am the one who blots out your sins for my own sake and will never think of them again."

Human forgiveness often comes with hidden strings. We say we forgive, but later, at a crucial time, we yank the string and pull the offense back into view. Saying "I forgive you" comes easily, but truly forgiving and forgetting is much more difficult. Knowing our tendency to store past offenses and hold grudges, we assume that God does the same.

But the Bible proclaims that God will never think of our sins again. Does God take sin seriously? Definitely! Sin is so serious that it deserves the death penalty, eternal death.

Does God want to forgive sinners? Certainly! God sent Jesus to take the punishment for sin, dying on the cross in our place. All who repent and trust in Christ can be forgiven.

Can we trust God to forgive us? Of course! Release that load of guilt. Stand tall and breathe the sweet air of forgiveness.

From Living Water for Those Who Thirst Tyndale House Publishers (2000), pp 37-8

Content is derived from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation and other publications of Tyndale Publishing House