Welcome to the InTouch podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, May 22nd.

Have you ever found yourself begging God to forgive you?

Today, we are reminded that forgiveness isn't based on how fervently we ask, but solely on Christ's sacrifice.

If the Lord Jesus Christ had intended for his children to live in bondage, he would

never have said he came to set the captives free. If he came to set free, those are in bondage.

Surely he does not intend for you and me to live in any form of bondage. Yet that is exactly

where many of God's people are living in some form of bondage

of the other. One of those forms of bondage is this. That is the fear or the feeling of not being

quite sure that God has forgiven us, that we are accepted, that everything is right between us, that we have

not displeased God. Now, we're in a series on forgiveness, and today I want to talk about

confession and forgiveness. What part does confession have to play in our forgiveness? So if you'll

turn to 1 John chapter 1,

and I want us to read beginning in verse 5 and read through verse 10 of that chapter and chapter 2, the first two verses. And in the first four verses of this book, John is

introducing the book and also telling where he's coming from, and that is he's coming from

a basis of conviction of the

incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ that he came as God in the form of flesh. He says,

we've seen him, handled him, have seen him. He's the word of life. He is eternal life.

And then he says in verse 5, and this is the message that we've heard from him,

and announce to you that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we

have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have

fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say

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