THE ENEMY WANTS TO DEFINE YOU BY YOUR SCARS.

JESUS WANTS TO DEFINE YOU WITH HIS.   

~LOUIE GIGLIO~


The quote from Louie Giglio is right on target.  I see this in my own life and I have seen it in nearly every believer who has come to my office for counseling for over four decades.  One of Satan’s primary strategies against us is the constant accusation that our past failures disqualify us from serving God and accomplishing great things in the kingdom.  He tries to persuade us that our past failures and present imperfections disqualify us from the blessings of God and even answered prayers. He tells us that God may tolerate us but he doesn’t delight in us.

Since the beginning, his blue print has been to tempt us to sin and then to plaster us with shame as a result.  In the Garden, once Satan had persuaded Adam and Eve that God was withholding the greatest blessings from them and once they took and ate…they were overcome with shame.  

We were clearly told that the two humans God had created were both naked and felt no shame.  Before they allowed Satan to draw them away, they walked with God in the Garden without being dressed and somehow felt totally loved and accepted.  The moment they sinned, they began to hide from God and blame others for their decisions. They were ashamed.

I like to differentiate between guilt and shame.  Guilt is the feeling I have done something wrong while shame is the feeling that there is something unacceptable about me.  I am defective.  I am beyond love.  I am beyond redemption or, at least, beyond God ever delighting in me.

Satan always draws our attention to our scars brought by rejection, abuse, abandonment, and our own sins from the past.  How often have we asked forgiveness over and over for some source of shame in our past?  When we do, we reveal a belief that the blood of Christ is not quite sufficient for our defectiveness, our sin.  We feel that we must be overwhelmed with remorse and self-loathing for God to forgive us.  So…we beat ourselves up and heap shame upon ourselves as some kind of penance that might eventually earn us true forgiveness…but our shame still remains.

The only escape from this hell of self-condemnation the enemy heaps on us is the cross.  His scars. The gospel is simple.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Jn.3:16).  The sacrifice of Jesus was offered for our sins so that the record of those sins would be erased in the courts of heaven.  When we believe and trust God, he makes us righteous, he remembers our sins no more and removes them as far as the east is from the west.  No amount of penance, self-loathing, or self-imposed suffering will take away or sin or our shame. If it could, Jesus died for nothing.  Only the blood of the Lamb can do so.

Faith removes our sin and love removes our shame.  The problem with the gospel is it seems too good to be true. We sense that we must pay for our crimes and that no judge can simply say, ”Lets forget it.”  We are correct.  Sin and crimes must be paid for and they have been…by holy blood.  But because the gospel is so simple, we think there must be something more in the fine print.  But there is not.  There is only grace that comes by faith…not perfect faith, but faith enough to reach out to Jesus.

Satan’s tactic is to keep us focused on ourselves…our sin, our past, our failures, our current imperfections.  He magnifies them.  I know godly people who, while they read scripture, find every passage on judgment highlighted in their minds and who feel every passage on grace is not for them. Satan twists the word as they read it. So, they read and feel even more condemned than when they started.  Then they stop reading. But Christ’s sacrifice is greater than all of our sins.  His blood is sufficient.  He is our high priest that constantly intercedes for us and pleads his blood over our failings.

To receive his forgiveness and to take joy in that forgiveness gives him glory.  When the enemy tempted Jesus in the wilderness after forty days of fasting, Jesus countered his temptations by declaring the word of God.  We should do the same.  When the enemy whispers his reminders of our weakness and failures, we should declare our forgiveness and righteousness in Christ.

Never mind trying to convince yourself or God that you couldn’t help yourself or that circumstances forced you to sin. Never mind minimizing or rationalizing what you did. That simply keeps the focus on your scars rather than on His scars. No matter what you did or what happened to you, you are a new creation in Christ. Scripture tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus.  Keep being amazed at his love, his sacrifice, his mercy, his gentleness with sinners and the all-sufficiency of his blood.  

Do not let the enemy accuse you of something for which there is no record in heaven. When he whispers, “You are not worthy.” Respond with, “God has made me worthy.  Christ became sin for me, that I might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus!”  Faith is not about being perfect people, but a conviction that we really are who God says we are and he has truly removed our sin and our shame by the blood and the scars of Jesus.  Say it, claim it, and never let yourself say otherwise.