No Condemnation
by Justin Jones (Pastor of Spiritual Formation and Singles Ministry)
It’s been a crazy couple of months for us as a family. We bought and renovated a house, moved, I finished a master’s degree, changed positions at the church, and a lot of other things happened. I know that most of us could have similar stories. In the midst of all of this chaos there were several great answers to prayer and God working in different ways. But I have been working on my master’s for four years now and all of this added stress on top of the long marathon of working on a master’s degree day in and day out for four years brought a lot of cost.
There are some convictions in my life that I try not to break. One of the primary ones is that my life is ordered with my passion for God first, my family second, and my ministry and everything else third. So I have tried my best not to let my ministry and my master’s interfere with family time which means that all work is done after Judah goes to bed at night and that I leave one day a week where my focus is my family and not my work. And I have tried to leave tangible room for my relationship with Christ to keep growing. But something has to give right? Well, for me that is usually sleep and taking care of myself physically. Also, taking time to be alone is something that suffers.
And so in the midst of everything happening the past couple months, the lack of sleep, and the stresses that we all deal with I found myself falling into some bad patterns and wrong thinking. And part of that is the pressure and guilt to tell myself that I am a failure for not getting everything done the way I think it should be done. Also, I have fallen into the trap of feeling ashamed when I mess up and instead of submitting that to God, I start to take that on myself like that is who I am at the core.
But last week something cool happened. I had another long night like many go and I felt a lot of regret about how some things had happened in my life. I woke up and knelt by the bed to pray and I started into my normal “God, I am sorry and I ask that you would give me the strength to be better…”, but before I could even finish I distinctly heard God say to me “my mercies are new every morning.” (Lamentations 3:22-23) Then he said, “Stop saying sorry” and there was a sense that he wanted me to simply remember who I was in Him and live that out. He reaffirmed His love for me as a child of His and that His children don’t do some of the things I was doing. It was done in the most truthful and yet most loving way, with no condemnation. He was reminding me that I was a new creation, that He had redeemed me, and that my identity was not a failure simply because I was His child. There was immediate peace in my heart and a desire to live for Him passionately.
You see, for many of us, we are constantly speaking negative and destructive things into our lives. We think we are failures at every turn and are simply trying to work as hard as we can to earn the feeling of peace about our situation. But if we have received Jesus Christ as our Lord, we have a new identity. We are rooted in Christ, we are the righteousness of God, we are beloved, and the same power that conquered the grave now lives in us. Romans 8:1 says that there is no condemnation when we are in Christ Jesus. We must stop condemning ourselves and instead we must be releasing our sin and shame to God and accepting His love for us. If we do that, we will find newfound strength to live out the plans that God has for us.
It’s been a crazy couple of months for us as a family. We bought and renovated a house, moved, I finished a master’s degree, changed positions at the church, and a lot of other things happened. I know that most of us could have similar stories. In the midst of all of this chaos there were several great answers to prayer and God working in different ways. But I have been working on my master’s for four years now and all of this added stress on top of the long marathon of working on a master’s degree day in and day out for four years brought a lot of cost.
There are some convictions in my life that I try not to break. One of the primary ones is that my life is ordered with my passion for God first, my family second, and my ministry and everything else third. So I have tried my best not to let my ministry and my master’s interfere with family time which means that all work is done after Judah goes to bed at night and that I leave one day a week where my focus is my family and not my work. And I have tried to leave tangible room for my relationship with Christ to keep growing. But something has to give right? Well, for me that is usually sleep and taking care of myself physically. Also, taking time to be alone is something that suffers.
And so in the midst of everything happening the past couple months, the lack of sleep, and the stresses that we all deal with I found myself falling into some bad patterns and wrong thinking. And part of that is the pressure and guilt to tell myself that I am a failure for not getting everything done the way I think it should be done. Also, I have fallen into the trap of feeling ashamed when I mess up and instead of submitting that to God, I start to take that on myself like that is who I am at the core.
But last week something cool happened. I had another long night like many go and I felt a lot of regret about how some things had happened in my life. I woke up and knelt by the bed to pray and I started into my normal “God, I am sorry and I ask that you would give me the strength to be better…”, but before I could even finish I distinctly heard God say to me “my mercies are new every morning.” (Lamentations 3:22-23) Then he said, “Stop saying sorry” and there was a sense that he wanted me to simply remember who I was in Him and live that out. He reaffirmed His love for me as a child of His and that His children don’t do some of the things I was doing. It was done in the most truthful and yet most loving way, with no condemnation. He was reminding me that I was a new creation, that He had redeemed me, and that my identity was not a failure simply because I was His child. There was immediate peace in my heart and a desire to live for Him passionately.
You see, for many of us, we are constantly speaking negative and destructive things into our lives. We think we are failures at every turn and are simply trying to work as hard as we can to earn the feeling of peace about our situation. But if we have received Jesus Christ as our Lord, we have a new identity. We are rooted in Christ, we are the righteousness of God, we are beloved, and the same power that conquered the grave now lives in us. Romans 8:1 says that there is no condemnation when we are in Christ Jesus. We must stop condemning ourselves and instead we must be releasing our sin and shame to God and accepting His love for us. If we do that, we will find newfound strength to live out the plans that God has for us.