I am not beyond forgiveness. Neither are you. Nobody Is.
For a long time, that has been hard for me to believe. I know that God is forgiving, and that He forgives everyone, but I have had trouble believing that He wanted to forgive me. I have done a lot of bad things that I felt that God would not forgive me for; if I shared what they were you would probably think I am being absurd thinking that those things are beyond forgiveness.
Last week, I went to an Evangelical Catholic Training Camp preparing me to share the love of Jesus with people at my college through a new ministry that we would create as an extension of the Catholic Campus Ministry. It was one of the best weeks of my life to be around one hundred people filled with God’s love and wanting to share it with others.
I had dealt with a lot of anxiety this past summer which made it difficult for me to pray. I had some conversations with people there that really helped me out and they told me that God is fine with me where I am at and that he won’t push me past what I am ready for. That was really comforting to me.
Through my experience at Evangelical Catholic and what I have thought about since then, when thinking about sharing my faith with people, I thought “What makes me emotional about my faith?” When people that I want to share God’s love with see that this love is so important to me, they may be more interested in experiencing it for themselves.
I think that I have experienced a breakthrough in my relationship with God this past week. I no longer believe that God is an angry God ready to strike me down when I pray for guidance and He tells me something that I have to do and that He will condemn me if I don’t do it. Everyone I talked to last week told me God is not like that. I already sort of knew this, but now I truly believe that God will forgive me for all of my sins, even the really bad ones, and to believe that fills me with all kinds of good emotions. It feels amazing and freeing to truly believe that because for the past year and more, I knew it was supposed to be true but couldn’t really feel it for myself. Now I fully feel God’s forgiveness and it feel freeing and amazing.
I hope that you will also believe that God is a God of love and forgiveness and that he will forgive you for all of your sins, even the really bad ones. To truly believe that feels awesome. 1 John 1:9 (NIV) says
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
If this is something you struggle with, and would like to talk to be about it, you can message me on Twitter (link in bio) or comment on this article and I can give you my phone number.
God bless you. Love, Fouad.
