God Is Not Mad at You: You Can Experience Real Love, Acceptance & Guilt-free Living (5 page)

Under this old covenant, sin could be covered by these sacrifices, but never removed. The sense of guilt connected to sin was ever present. But the good news is that God has made a new covenant with man, and He ratified or sealed it in His own blood.
It is a better covenant and one that is far superior to the old. The old covenant was initiated with the blood of animals, but the new was initiated with the sinless blood of Jesus Christ.

Under the new covenant, Jesus fulfilled or kept all of the law of the old covenant and died in our place to pay for our sins and misdeeds. He took the punishment that we deserved, and promised that if we would believe in Him and all that He did for us, He would forever stand in our place, and our responsibility to keep the law would be met in Him. The problem that we have now is that many new covenant believers do believe in Jesus and accept Him as their Savior, but they still live under the old covenant by trying to keep the law in their own strength. The old covenant focused on what man could do, but the new covenant focuses on what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. (Read Hebrews 8 and 9 for more study in this area.)

The law is perfect, but it cannot perfect us because we have no ability to keep it perfectly. We should avoid living under rules and regulations thinking that if we keep them perfectly God will be pleased. The sin principle in our flesh is actually incited and stirred up by the law.

Let’s say that Mary attended a church that was very strict about regular church attendance. If she missed church an elder in the church called her to find out why she wasn’t there. In addition
they required their members to read the Bible through each year, and attend at least one of the church prayer meetings each week. They required all of the church members to serve in some capacity in the church. They had to work in the nursery, or do volunteer work of some kind. Now, all of these things may be good things in themselves, but the very fact that they were presented as rules to be followed would stir up something in Mary’s flesh that would make her resent doing them. Mary would eventually not want to go to church, dread Bible reading and prayer and feel pressured by serving at church.

The more we are told that we cannot do something, the more we want to do it. If Mary thinks that she cannot miss church without being questioned, it will only make her not want to go. That, sadly, is human nature. If you repeatedly tell little Johnnie not to touch the glass table, he will become very interested in touching it even though he previously may not have even noticed it was there. Even if he is too frightened to touch it in front of you, he will certainly touch it when he believes you cannot see him do it. Your law against touching the glass table has actually given Johnnie an interest in doing it.

The law is good, but it cannot make us good. Only God can do that by giving us a new nature, a new heart and His Spirit. The law points out our weaknesses, but Jesus strengthens us in them. The law shows us our problem, but Jesus solves our problem!

God gave the law so we would eventually know that we needed a Savior. We can want to do what is right, but we have no ability to do it apart from God’s continual help. It is interesting to realize that God gave the rules so we would find out that we couldn’t keep them. The law is actually designed to bring us to the end of ourselves, or to the end of self-effort and works of the flesh. God’s desire for us is that we learn to depend on Him in all things.
He does not want us to be self-reliant and He will not allow us to succeed as long as we are. The law is perfect, holy and righteous, and it shows us what sin is. The law was intended to lead us to Jesus, not to more and more struggling for perfection. It is intended to make us fully aware that we need God, and to make us learn to lean on Him. Jesus said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

A legalistic approach to our relationship with God can actually steal every drop of life in us and leave us burned out and exhausted until we die to the law and begin to live for, in and through Christ.

Although I no longer strive for perfection, I do desire to do my best each day. Not to earn God’s love or acceptance, but simply because I love Him. I encourage you to do the same thing.

When we love God we can never “not care” about improving our behavior, but we must fully understand that God’s acceptance of us is never based on our behavior, but on our faith in Jesus. Our survey at the office revealed that many people simply wanted to know when they had done enough. Many of them, I am sure, had done their very best but still felt pressured to do more, and that is impossible. We can do our best, but we cannot offer God perfection, and we should not feel pressured to do so.

I heard a story about a student who turned a paper in to his professor and the professor wrote on the bottom of it, “Is this
the best you can do?” and gave it back to him. Knowing it was not his best, the student did the paper again, and once again the professor gave it back to him with the same phrase at the bottom. This went on for about three rounds and finally when the professor asked if it was the best he could do, he thought seriously for a moment and answered, “Yes, I believe this is the best I can do.” Then his professor said, “Good, now I will accept it.” I think this story teaches us that all God wants is our best and He can work with that, even when our best is not perfect.

Sandra is a lovely young woman who has struggled with anger and perfectionism. Here is her story in her own words.

“For as long as I can remember I have worked desperately hard on what I call the ‘treadmill of accomplishment’ trying to be acceptable to myself. I have a strong tendency toward perfectionism and could not seem to rest unless everything on my list was accomplished. I would rarely allow myself to rest, or even if I was resting physically, I could not shut down mentally or emotionally. I didn’t realize what was wrong but I felt as if I was working all the time and l lived with tremendous frustration.

“I desperately wanted to be at peace but couldn’t seem to do it. My husband of twenty years is a person who loves peace and he watched me continually get frustrated with life and would pray for me that I would see what I was doing to myself. Yes, I was doing it to myself!

“I was anxious and angry most of the time, and even if I managed not to display it, I felt it inside. I wasn’t angry at my family… just angry at myself for not being able to do it all! I felt like a
failure at the end of each day because I set unrealistic and ridiculous (impossible to reach) goals for myself. When I saw that I was not going to get everything accomplished that I had planned to do I would go into a panic and try to work harder and faster. Of course my family could feel the frustration I lived with and if they needed my assistance with something while I was in panic mode it would make me even more panic-stricken, anxious and angry at myself. The more they needed, the more I felt like a failure.

“This had been the story of my life, and although I knew something about my life wasn’t right, I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was that was wrong. After all, what could be wrong with wanting to do everything right? There were even times when I felt like I hated my life, which was confusing to me because I have a wonderful husband and two beautiful girls and a lovely home. In addition to that I have known Jesus as my Savior since I was ten years old. So, why did I hate my life and feel unhappy? What I really hated was the fact that I felt like all I ever did was work. I really thought that my schedule and all that I had to do was my problem. I would frequently blurt out, ‘I feel like all I ever do is work!’

“During the final months of 2011, I found myself crying out to God like never before saying, ‘I just can’t live like this anymore, God. I need serious help!’ The New Year began and on January 2, during my devotional time with God, I asked Him if there was anything in particular that He wanted me to ‘accomplish’ in 2012. Well, He certainly did not want me to try to ‘accomplish’ something else, but He did have plenty to say to me that morning. I remember typing words into my journal so fast I could barely keep up. This is what I wrote:

“That day after typing everything into my journal, I prayed and asked God to forgive me for living like a fool in this area.

“I immediately noticed that I was responding differently in a variety of situations. Day after day, I watched carefully to make sure the change was real and not going to evaporate as quickly as it came. After a few weeks went by, I realized that on January 2 God gave me a revelation that was changing my life. One of the things I noticed was that I now looked at what I accomplished each day instead of what I didn’t accomplish. I had turned from the negative to the positive! Having unfinished work didn’t bother me anymore. The feeling of being a failure was completely gone. Previously I could rarely ‘accomplish enough’ to satisfy myself, but now, what I accomplished each day was good enough. My worth and value was no longer in what I accomplished, but in what Jesus had accomplished for me out of His deep love for me.

“Since then, there have been challenges along the way and times when I had to purposely hold on to my freedom. But when
I start to feel anxious, I stop and say, ‘Sandra, you are okay even if this task doesn’t get done right now.’ Enjoyment and relaxation is something that I would not allow myself to enjoy before, but I am happy to say that it is a regular part of my life now!

“God has used many things to reinforce my newfound freedom, including my mom’s book entitled
Do Yourself a Favor… Forgive
. I needed to realize that God was not mad at me and to forgive myself for being imperfect, and her book helped me do that.

“I feel as if I have been born again all over again, and it is amazing how much more I accomplish since God has delivered me from trying!”

Sandra is my daughter, and I am extremely happy for her because I watched her suffer most of her life with disappointment in herself because she could not be perfect. I remember her doing her homework as a little girl, crumpling up paper after paper and throwing them in the trashcan because she made a mistake and it wasn’t perfect. She was anxious, frustrated and angry, but now she is peaceful, relaxed and happy. The same thing is available to everyone who needs it and is willing to believe the truth of God’s Word. Declare boldly, “I don’t have to be perfect, and I am not angry at myself.” Now say, out loud
“God is not mad at me!”

The Bible encourages us to maintain a conscience that is void of offense toward God and man. But if we have an oversensitive conscience, we will find that we feel guilty about many things that don’t seem to bother other people. A symptom of perfectionism or a performance/acceptance mentality is anxiety. The tyranny of everything we think we ought to do and should have
done or not done and the self-deprecation it creates produce an oversensitive conscience that is filled with anxiety, guilt and condemnation. I suffered with an oversensitive conscience because I desperately wanted to please God, but was also desperately afraid that I wasn’t doing it. If my husband made a mistake, he got over it so quickly that it irritated me. It irritated me because when I made mistakes, I suffered for days agonizing over it, and I could not seem to shake the guilty feeling that my oversensitive conscience produced.

My earthly father had a knack for making me feel guilty even though I wasn’t always sure what I’d done wrong. I assumed that his anger meant that I was guilty of something. After eighteen years of practice, while living at home with my parents, I had no experience with any way to live other than being “guilty.” Now I know that I felt the wrong way about myself all of the time, and when God did deliver me through His Word and Holy Spirit, I actually went through a period when I felt guilty about my lack of guilt! I tell people, “I didn’t feel right if I didn’t feel wrong.” That is deep bondage indeed, but fortunately I can say that I rarely feel guilty now, and if I am convicted of sin, I immediately repent, ask for and receive God’s amazing forgiveness, and go on enjoying my life and fellowship with God. The same freedom that Sandra talked about, and that I am talking about, is available for you if you need it.

People who live with guilt often make a very deep commitment to God to do better and to try harder. They desperately want to rid themselves of the feeling of guilt, but I know from experience that merely “trying harder” is not the answer; in fact, it usually increases the problem. At a Christian conference or in a church service, it may sound plausible to make a deeper commitment and to think, “I am just going to try harder.” But back in the real
world, sooner or later we make mistakes and find once again that we are not perfect, and feel even more defeated than before.