Still Small Voice of Love

11

Luke 7:48

Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Beloved: Lord, I acknowledge that my sins are many and often unowned. I hope to keep them secret, pretending they don’t exist and hoping no one will notice them. But You know all, and You know me inside and out. Forgive me, Lord, and as I’m blessed by that forgiveness, help me to love You well.

Lover: Dear One, I long for you to recognize and own your sins so that I can cleanse them and make you whole. I want to free you from that mask of pretense, set you free to be all that I made you to be, and enable you to show your love to Me and all who touch your life.

¹So now, those who are in Christ Jesus are not judged guilty. ²Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit that brings life made me free from the law that brings sin and death. ³The law was without power, because the law was made weak by our sinful selves. But God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son to earth with the same human life that others use for sin. By sending his Son to be an offering to pay for sin, God used a human life to destroy sin. ⁴He did this so that we could be the kind of people the law correctly wants us to be. Now we do not live following our sinful selves, but we live following the Spirit.

⁵Those who live following their sinful selves think only about things that their sinful selves want. But those who live following the Spirit are thinking about the things the Spirit wants them to do. ⁶If people’s thinking is controlled by the sinful self, there is death. But if their thinking is controlled by the Spirit, there is life and peace.

(Romans 8:1-6, NCV)