Grace:
- Elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion or action.
- Mercy; clemency; pardon
Have you ever felt that you don’t deserve grace? That the things you have done to yourself, or others have disqualified you. Have you settled in your filth, and accepted that forgiveness will never be given to you?
Yea, me too. Too often I tend to think this way. I am a person that feels guilt and shame very heavily. I can literally wreck myself If I think I have hurt or offended someone. It becomes almost all-consuming.
It’s a strange paradox really, because it is very simple for me to forgive others, but I never feel deserving of forgiveness. Especially not if it’s coming from the most high God.
How can an all perfect, all loving God forgive me, and all my sins? This was a hard reality for me, until recently.
My team and I visited the killing fields where a lot of Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge, a mass genocide that happened from 1975-1979, which killed almost 2 million people. While visiting the fields I heard a remarkable story.
The leader of this tragic movement was a man named Pol Pot. His goal wasto transform Cambodia into a rural, classless society in which there were no rich people, no poor people, and no exploitation. To makes this, happen, they abolished money, free markets, normal schooling, private property, foreign clothing styles, religious practices, and traditional Khmer culture. Public schools, pagodas, mosques, churches, universities, shops and government buildings were closed or turned into prisons, stables, reeducation camps and granaries.
Along with Pol Plot, was a man named Kaing Guek Eav, aka Comrade Duch, who oversaw setting up prisons in the capital, where thousands of people were tortured multiple times a day and even killed. These prisons were set up to weed out the suspected enemies of this revolution. On July 26, 2010 Kaing was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison for extermination, enslavement, imprisonment, torture, one instance of rape, and other inhumane acts. Then sentenced to life in Prison on February 3, 2012.
After visiting the fields, my heart was so heavy from seeing pictures, and hearing stories of how innocent people were killed brutally. Many people had their families, hopes, and humanity violently ripped away from them. They even took it as far as killing infants and children because of their twisted way of thinking, “no gain in keeping, no loss in weeding out.”
But that’s not the end of Kaing’s story. Kaing ended up giving his life to Christ. A man that has done every sin under the sun, and then some, has believed that HE IS FORGIVEN. He believes that when Jesus died on the cross, he held all our sins on His shoulders, and now he is given new life. That NO sin is too big, or even scary to our God.
Did you know, that in the bible it says that when we repent, God forgets our sins?
“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” Isaiah 43:25
If the Lord of Lords can forgive and forget our sins, and all of Kaing’s, then why can’t I forgive myself?
Well friends, now I can. I can walk in the freedom of Jesus, without condemnation, but covered in his glorious grace. And so can YOU! I promise you, the way you see yourself is not the way God sees you. You are his beloved child. He knew everything you were going to do before existence, yet still chose YOU, and forgives YOU! I think it’s time we start accepting this wonderful, merciful forgiveness, and walking as brave sons and daughters of God. Unashamed, and unreserved!
