Encouragement

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Dear Lord, teach me how to really forgive myself. I think guilt has been a major part of my life ever since I was a very little girl. I don't understand or even recognize it. Please, open my eyes to see what You see – and then take it from me!

· Imagine that you are a golden casket. Lift the lid and look inside. What do you see?

# A beautiful glow of pure light shining from all the precious diamonds that fill the box.

· This is My light within you. Is there any room in the casket for fakes?

# No, Lord.

· Then all you have to do is keep the casket filled with Me. Do not lean on your own understanding. Do not walk without Me. Every time you do so, you remove a diamond and replace it with a useless pebble. Every time I call this sin to mind and deal with it, I take out a pebble and put back a diamond – pure, white, indestructible, refined. Sin is one thing only – PRIDE – walking in your way and not Mine. Your sense of deep guilt sees a casket filled with the pebbles you put in there – but in reality it is filled with My diamonds.

# Lord, You are a pearl beyond price. Thank you for your truth but I still don’t really understand HOW I’m to forgive myself . . .

· Dear child of Mine, can you not yet see? Open the casket again. Is it dark and ugly inside?

# No. Lord – bright and beautiful.

· Are you beautiful?

# I’m sorry Lord, but I don’t feel beautiful, even when You say that I am.

· Here is your problem – You are still looking to yourself for your goodness, your righteousness. You are still shocked and humiliated by your ability to sin. Your pride is pricked every time you fail. If you walk in the flesh, trusting in yourself, you will continue to sin. Only in Me will you be sinless. Believe Me – you are capable of FAR WORSE sin. Self dies by LOSING itself in Me. You have known this in your intellect for years; now practice it until it is a constant reality in your heart and not only an intermittent victory. The leaves on the trees you are looking at through the window right now do nothing to receive nourishment. They neither wrestle nor strive but merely rest in the knowledge that they will be fed. See the sap rise up from the roots – flowing through cell after cell – feeding the leaf bud until it bursts forth, enlarging and becoming greener every day. When the time comes for it to wither and die, it falls lifelessly to the ground and dissolves back into the soil and into my roots – in other words – it is lost in Me. Does the leaf do this work?

# No, Lord – it can’t.

· Then no more can you do the work. Does the leaf look back at its past and regret its lack of early maturity? Does it try to speed up the process out of season?

# No, Lord.

· Then no more are you to look back and see failure. Neither try to strive for rapid growth. This is to be accomplished in MY time and in MY way. As you so recently shared with Tracey, My ways are not your ways and My thoughts are high above yours. You have one task in all this – to trust Me and keep your eyes turned to Me. Do you see now that your guilt is really pride and unbelief?

# Not yet Lord, but I trust You to tear open the veil so I can enter the Holy of Holies.

· I died for your sin – past, present and future. Did I ever say that you had to keep carrying guilt around inside yourself and pulling it out to dwell on every now and then?

# No, Lord.

· What did I say?

# That it has been cast away as far as the east is from the west.

· When you need your feet washed, do I have to wash the rest of your body as well?

# No. Lord – your word tells me so.

* Then believe, child. You are already clean – your feet are just a very small part of your body. The work of cleansing has been done!

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