Chapter 10 - Joyful Remembrance: Reaching into Bucket Three

This week, we begin looking at our guilty past when we responded well. As Rev. Viars states in the chapter, it may initially seem that we do not need to reach back into this 'bucket', given that we have already responded in a manner according to God's word.

However, we may not always feel forgiven, and we may continually revisit our past sins and failures. In doing so, we fail to truly understand what God has done in Christ on our behalf.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

(2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV)

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,

(Ephesians 1:7 ESV)

In the chapter, we are also presented with four reasons we may be (or become) stuck in our past:

-Lack of genuine repentance

-Fear of man

-Unwillingness to forsake our sin

-Losing our awe of God's forgiving grace

In considering our guilty past, let us prayerfully seek to understand where we may be letting our feelings to take precedence over the promises in God's word; specifically, that he has granted us forgiveness in Christ. And where we may be continually revisiting our past and replaying our failures, let us hold fast to what Scripture says about the all-sufficient work of Christ and our standing in him as children of the Living God:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

(Romans 8:1-4 ESV)