Things like worry, fear, guilt, stress, condemnation, insecurity or rejection can stop us from knowing God’s delight in our lives! A lady attended my Spiritual Health Weekends and during that time heard what it says in the Bible about how the Lord treated the prostitute, Rahab. I had spoken on how the Lord loves each of us equally and even though Rahab did not belong to the nation of Israel, even though she was a prostitute, the Lord had plans and purposes for her life. Rahab’s future began to change when she helped the spies who had come from the nation of Israel to escape from Jericho. She saved their lives and because of that, when the walls of that great city fell down and her city was destroyed, she and all her family were saved.
However, God didn’t just save her life; he blessed her in the most incredible way. Not only did the nation of Israel invite her to live among them as one of them, but also she met and married a wonderful Jewish man and in time they had a child who eventually became the great grandfather of the most famous king of Israel – King David. Not only that, but if you look in Matthew 1:5 you will see that Rahab is mentioned in Jesus’ ancestors. She is specifically mentioned in the line of Jesus. What an amazing God! He delights in us and blesses us beyond what we can ask or even imagine!
When my second son was born, I remember Daniel, my first son, asking his dad and I if we would love him less now that he had a brother. We told him that when a child is born into the family something happens to your heart. Instead of him having to share our love, our hearts would grow bigger to enable us to love him in the same deep way we had always loved him and yet still have room to love his brother in the same way. That is just a small reflection of how the Lord loves each of us. Don’t think that because you have done wrong things in your life that the Lord could never love you. Rahab and so many others in the Bible show us that this is never the case.
As the lady listened to the teaching on Rahab she suddenly realised that it was possible to get rid of the condemnation she had lived under for years! She never could accept that God could love her because of all the horrible things that had gone on in her past. The truth that night set her free! Condemnation never comes from God!
Are you living under fear or condemnation? Is guilt, stress or rejection weighing you down? Then you can be assured that it does not come from the Lord. Jesus did not come to condemn us, but he came to set us free! Take time to sit with the Lord and if you have never confessed what you have done wrong, then do so and ask for his forgiveness. He will not only forgive you, but he will free you from those things that have caused a huge burden in your heart. He will free you like he did for this lady and like her you can feel as free as a bird. Don’t stay in your cage of guilt and shame any longer, but instead let God set you totally and utterly free.
