TODAY IS…

a terrific day to let it go.

“I – yes, I alone – will blot out your sins for My own sake and I will never think of them again.” Isaiah 43:25 NLT

After the Titanic sinks in James Cameron’s epic film by the same name, the movie’s two stars are adrift. Unfortunately there is only room on the piece of debris they found for one of them. Of course, “Jack” lets “Rose” lie above the water while he floats alongside, holding onto their makeshift “raft” in the frigid North Atlantic. Before too long, the temperature of the water finally gets the best of Jack and he cannot hold on any longer.

In a scene that had many eyes brimming with tears in theaters everywhere, Jack lets go and sinks down and away from his beloved Rose.

Letting go is sometimes painful and poignant.

There are, however, times when letting go can be uplifting, unshackling, liberating, and joyful. When we reach out to God with a repentant heart and ask for His forgiveness, we are able to “let go” of the burden of pain, shame, and guilt, that has been holding us back and pulling us down.

The lesson the Lord is teaching us in Isaiah 43:25 is this: “Once I forgive your sins, I forget them. I do not hold on to them or hold them against you. I let them go.”

And we must do the same.

This is not a license to sin, be sorry, and repeat. This is not an automatic dismissal of our sins. Repentance is required, and it must be sincere. Of course, this also does not mean that God will not forgive us more than once for the same transgression.

We are weak, and we are human.

The Israelites repeatedly turned away from God. Each time they repented, however, they could always count on God’s forgiveness, and they demonstrated this understanding when they prayed, “You will again have compassion on us; You will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.” (Micah 7:19 NIV).

At the same time, if we find ourselves repeatedly going to God asking forgiveness for the same thing (or things) then we know where the focus of our prayers for strength needs to lie.

It is important to remember that any sins for which we have been truly repentant and have received God’s forgiveness have been forgotten by the only one who matters. If we are constantly nagged by the burden of guilt or shame for those sins, we are succumbing to an act of Satan – not a reminder from God.

Always turn to God for the strength to resist temptation in the first place, but when it comes to forgiven sins, we must do what God does, and “Let It Go.”

*******

Taken from “TODAY IS….A Gift From God”, (C) 2013 Tony Casson