The Power of Right Believing: 7 Keys to Freedom from Fear, Guilt, and Addiction (12 page)

Perhaps for years you have seen yourself as someone who is weak, someone who easily succumbs to guilt, anxiety attacks, or addictions. Today is the day to turn your eyes away from yourself and your weaknesses. Learn to see what God sees. He sees you in Christ Jesus, through the lens of the cross and through the precious blood that was shed for your redemption. Flush out all your wrong beliefs and see yourself as a precious gem, dearly beloved and close to God’s heart.

Let me ask you this: When you realize how valuable and precious you are in His eyes, does that make you want to go out and sin or to continue living in sin?

Of course not!

On the contrary, your thoughts will run more along lines of, “Hey, this is not how a believer, who is precious to the Lord, behaves. A precious diamond doesn’t belong in the mud, grime, and filth of sin. It’s unbecoming of a diamond. The rightful place of the diamond is close to God’s heart where it sparkles and shines.”

Knowing your true, righteous, and precious-to-God identity in Christ will elevate you from every addiction, bondage, and sin. It makes you want to walk and live the high life as a child of the King. Holy living, good character, and true morality are birthed out of seeing how God sees you today. If you see yourself as a dirty, rotten sinner, that wrong belief will keep you bound, and you will
end up behaving like a dirty, rotten sinner. I wrote this book to tell you that is
not
you! God sees you in Christ. When He sees you, He sees the cross, and through the cross you look beautiful. Therefore, don’t be afraid of God’s truth and light.

Do you know what happens to precious stones when light shines upon them? They sparkle and radiate with beauty. The truth is, light is a gem’s best friend because it brings out the best qualities of the precious stone. In the same way, as you are reading this right now, do you know that the light of God’s grace and truth is shining on you? It’s not here to condemn you, but to cause you to sparkle brilliantly and bring out your best qualities. It’s a light that shows the perfection of the work of Jesus in making you completely clean. It’s not a light to be feared. Grace brings out the best in you because grace always produces holiness. The more you receive God’s love and grace, and see how He sees you, the more you will arise from every area of defeat and shine gloriously for Jesus like the precious gems on the high priest’s breastplate.

It’s All about the Cross

There is an amazing secret hidden in the story of Balaam. Do you know what Balaam saw from the mountaintop when he was trying to curse God’s people? He saw this:

The Israelite encampment that Balaam saw formed a picture of the cross of Jesus.

What do you see? That’s right! It’s the cross of Jesus!

The Bible gives very specific details on how the twelve tribes of Israel set up their encampment and the number of people in each tribe (see Num. 2:2–32). We read that the camp of Judah (comprising Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun) on the eastern side of the encampment is the largest camp among them, and you can see from the illustration that it forms the longer, bottom extension of the cross. I told you that there are no insignificant details in the Bible—everything points to the person of Jesus. Isn’t this amazing? I love it when the cross of Jesus is revealed!

This means that when Balaam was trying to curse God’s people, he actually caught a glimpse of how God sees His people—through
the cross, through the sacrifice of His Son. Of course, Balaam didn’t understand the significance of the cross, and neither did the children of Israel at that time.

But you and I do.

My friend, when God looks at you today, He sees the price His beloved Son paid at the cross to ransom you from all your sins. He sees you in Christ. In His eyes, you are forgiven, righteous, precious, beautiful, valuable, and close to His heart. It’s time to see yourself as God sees you!

E
ven after being in active ministry for more than two decades, I am still amazed when I see just how hard people are on themselves. I believe this can be traced to their wrong beliefs about God. When you believe erroneously that God is hard on you for your failures, you will inevitably be hard on the people around you, and most of all, you will end up being really hard on yourself.

People who are hard on themselves cannot forgive themselves for the mistakes they’ve made in the past. Sadly, they end up punishing themselves, whether they know it or not. Some end up physically cutting and hurting themselves. Some binge on food or fall into substance abuse. Others indulge their sexual appetites and spiral out of control, hurting not only themselves but also their loved ones, all because they respond to an instinct to punish themselves, albeit unconsciously.

It’s a vicious cycle of defeat. The more they can’t forgive themselves, the more they hurt themselves with all kinds of behaviors and the more they end up bound by various destructive addictions.
This leads to even more guilt, which in turn drives them to punish themselves even more—and the cycle continues.

Release Your Failings to Jesus

That is why I believe the root cause of many sinful habits, fears, and addictions can be traced to condemnation. I want to talk to you today about going after condemnation as the root to help you receive God’s forgiveness in those areas so that you can break out of your cycle of defeat and step into a new cycle of victory.

Are you living with some unresolved guilt and condemnation today? I have great news for you. When you realize that God’s heart is not in condemnation but in forgiveness, your entire life can be turned around for His glory! I have personally witnessed so many lives transformed when they just take a small step of faith to believe in His grace and receive His forgiveness in their lives.

Instead of punishing themselves for their mistakes and disqualifying themselves, these people began to correct their beliefs and receive God’s forgiveness by seeing Jesus taking on their punishment. They began to see their Savior qualifying them to receive every blessing from God for their marriages, families, and careers.

Right now I want to encourage you to release the built-up guilt
and condemnation for whatever mistakes you’ve made over the years to the Lord.

Would you pray this prayer with me?

Lord Jesus, I don’t want to live this way anymore. Today I release all my failings, sins, and mistakes into Your loving hands. And I receive Your forgiveness right now into my heart. Thank You for Your precious blood that washes me whiter than snow. Right now I stand in Your righteousness, favor, joy, and peace. In Jesus’ name, Amen!

It’s a simple but powerful prayer. I encourage you to pray this prayer every time you fail and experience guilt and condemnation in your heart. Stop punishing yourself—your answer is found at the cross of Jesus. I promise you that when you turn to Jesus and remind yourself just how forgiven and righteous you are in Christ every time you fall short, you will start living like the forgiven and righteous person Jesus has made you.

God Loves You Perfectly

God is a God of forgiveness. He knows you perfectly and still loves you perfectly. We are slaves to the idea that if someone sees our flaws, they won’t love us anymore. Well, while that may be true in human relationships, God is not like that.

God sees all our imperfections, failings, and flaws on Jesus at the cross. Our sins and ugliness do not turn Him off. In fact, to
Him they are occasions to demonstrate His grace and forgiveness through the blood of His Son, who has removed all our sins efficaciously at Calvary.

So don’t be embarrassed about your flaws, mistakes, and imperfections. God knows your weaknesses better than you do, and He loves you just the same. His Word reminds us that Jesus is not someone “who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses.” Instead, Jesus was tempted in all points, yet He was without sin (Heb. 4:15). He understands every temptation and every trial that you are going through. He is not disappointed with you, and He is not waiting for you to live up to a set of dos and don’ts before He forgives and loves you. The Bible says, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Rom. 5:8–9).

Did you get that?
When
did God love you?

That’s right,
when you were still a sinner
. Before you even knew Him, when you were still in sin, He already loved you. How much more today, when you have been cleansed by Jesus’ blood and made righteous! Having received Jesus’ righteousness, you are righteous forever. Even when you fall into sin, your sins don’t make you a sinner again.

When you fall short today, you are still the righteousness of God. This is because your righteousness comes from Jesus. In the same way that a beautiful butterfly cannot morph back into a caterpillar,
once you have been made righteous by the blood of Jesus, you cannot morph back into a sinner. Knowing your righteous identity in Him then gives you the power to overcome every sin, every addiction, and every bad habit!

You Are Righteous in Christ

The wrong belief that many believers have is that they become sinners again whenever they fail. So they live their Christian lives in insecurity and condemnation. Sometimes they think they are righteous, sometimes they think they are sinners. They wrongly believe that their righteousness is dependent on how they perform that day. This leads to a severe identity crisis. It’s no wonder they are not seeing the breakthroughs that Jesus has already purchased for them at the cross!