God wants to restore to you the time you lost (Joel 2:25), the time in which you were broken, the time in which you barely knew which way to move or how to be, and also the time in which you actively moved your life forward AGAINST His will and incredible blessing for your life, and ultimately –
against you.
One of the toughest things for me to get my head around (and if I’m honest it still bites at me so THANK YOU JESUS FOR FREEING ME RIGHT NOW ON THIS) is that I not only got to and get to but MUST forgive my SELF.
I accepted God’s forgiveness …
I accepted the blood of Jesus and God’s GRACE in and through that …
I accepted and understood and ‘allowed’ it even in the many many years where I wasn’t ACTUALLY accepting the gift. I didn’t DISAGREE with it’s inherent truth, or think that I don’t get to have that even though of course I know I’m undeserving. But I accepted it ANYWAY, as you do a gift. Even if you are keeping the gift at arms length and wrapped up like a kids pass the parcel game ’cause you don’t know if you wanna handle opening it.
But forgive MYSELF?
Oh wow.
That would mean forgiving myself for the lost years. The crazy choices. The hurt I’ve caused in the lives of others. The ways I woulda should coulda been different as a PARENT. The ways I woulda coulda shoulda been different as a human. The WASTEFULNESS of the power and magnitude of the gifts God has given me, and the call on my life. The building the business in my own will. The mis-stewardship. The list goes on and on!
I felt like – I’m okay with letting God forgive me, that’s His job! That’s literally why Jesus died, so we GET to receive that blank slate and have eternal life. But forgive my SELF? How could I? Why WOULD I? That is TOO hard.
Some part of me felt as though I need to hold it over myself. As though I should be punished. As though I don’t deserve the absolute freedom God has for me because I really really did fuck shit up in a lot of ways and so I should have to live with that or at the very least have a dialled down experience of my BEST.
Funny thing is … I still allowed myself to create a truckload of money. To impact millions of people. To live into my purpose work. Look and feel my best. Have great friendships. And all in all really cultivate quite a wonderful life!
But my WONDERFUL life was (and I knew this) not GOD’S best for me.
And also there were certain areas I definitely kept safely at arms length. “You don’t deserve that Kat, you’re gonna screw it up again, you don’t DO right in that area, be careful!”
Do you understand that your inability to forgive and release your SELF is coming from Satan? Do you understand that in not forgiving yourself as GOD has forgiven you, you are enabling a continued spiritual stronghold? Do you understand that you are LITERALLY playing with demons and dancing with dark principalities in thinking you need to hold something over yourself or that you don’t deserve to live in freedom, joy, expansiveness, and OWNING of how perfect in God your life gets to be in all areas?
It took me some time to get my head around this. But in actual fact what it took me was this:
I JUST DECIDED TO ACCEPT IT.
God is calling you today that you just get to accept that you are free.
Answer the call.
