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Erase The Past
-Lindsay Oravits

I've done things in my life that I should not have done. I guess everyone feels the same way. But I can't let it go. Sometimes I feel like an ugly, horrible person and that if someone knew--especially any one of my friends, I'd be at a terrible loss. When my family tells me how proud they are of me, secretly I think, "yeah, if they only knew." What does a person do with that kind of guilt and shame? Its true that if someone can't forget their wrongdoings but keeps them locked up, those feelings will eventually destroy that person. Do you ever think like that? Am I the only loony tune around here?

Sure there are books, even Christian books, to help alleviate the pain, yet they fail to reach me. I think the best comfort I have in dealing with my past is in Romans chapter 6.

"Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life."

The Bible teaches that through Jesus and his sacrifice, all our sins have been forgiven. He doesn't care what we've done in the past because that was our old selves, our natural bodies as Paul says. Once we accept Jesus, our slates are wiped clean. There really is no need to dwell on what we have done, who we were, et cetera. God doesn't care! He cares about who we are now, what we are going to do now, who we are going to live for now.

Look at Matthew, he was a tax collector. Okay, that's not a sin (although some might disagree), but the situation can be worse.

Paul was a killer. He murdered Christians for a living until he literally was knocked off his horse and saw the light. Imagine that. Yet, Paul is one of the greatest apostles that ever existed. And I'll bet that when he was lying in bed at night, he didn't lie in the dark thinking of all the lives that he had taken or about the good old days of being a persecutor. Let's get real. I can imagine that when he was in bed he was thinking about what he was going to say in his letters to the Corinthians or Ephesians. The only difference between him and us, is that he was able to let go of his past. He understood that when Jesus died on the cross, all our sins died too.

Does this sound like preaching? I am. I'm preaching to you and I'm preaching to myself. There are people who can give advice but not take their own. I am one of those people. I pray now that this article, along with the others on this website, that the Bible and faith in Jesus will lead you to the realization that Jesus not only died to give us eternal life, but to give us a brand new life on earth.

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