You will never change. Has anyone ever said that to you? Have you ever believed it about yourself?
Sometimes we recognize our mistakes. We genuinely, sincerely repent. We fully intend to walk a new path. But something happens, and we fall again.
Why? We made the wrong choice. We may not have been paying full attention and fell in the hole again.
Or sometimes we decide willfully to test the waters and see if we can control ourselves. Just a few bites of that forbidden food. Just one or two drinks. Just one long kiss from a friend.
How could this happen? Because satan is patient and persistent. After Jesus had conquered satan in the desert, satan left Him. But …
“after finishing every temptation, the devil departed from Him until the next opportunity.”
Luke 4:13
Satan may leave you alone just to give you enough time to think you are free of him. But he is waiting for the next opportunity to snare you again.
And when he succeeds, he will pull out his next card. He will accuse you and pile on the guilt. He will tell you that you will never change.
And he often uses another tactic to keep you down. He gets you to constantly tell the story of how far you had fallen. Some people call this their testimony.
If someone spends most of the time describing their fall and then just tacks on the end, “but Jesus saved me,” satan is happy. Most of their testimony was about him!
Satan also wants you to stay away from God. So he will try to convince you that you have fallen so far, God will never take you back.
After all, if you are going to keep making the same mistake, how many times is God going to forgive you? Isn’t it three strikes and you’re out?
Not with God. When you genuinely repented the other times, God not only forgave you, He forgot.
God said, “For I will forgive their wrongdoing, and I will never again remember their sins.”
Hebrews 8:12
So whatever you already repented of has been wiped from God’s Memory. This is your first time.
You fell. Get up. Ask His Forgiveness. Receive His Forgiveness. And get rid of that old picture of who you were.
Follow Paul’s lead!
One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:13-14
