In our last podcast, in our week-long focus on forgiveness, today we're going to look at what it takes to forgive ourselves.

For some of us, forgiving ourselves can be the hardest part of forgiveness.

May God give us the grace to see ourselves as he does and offer

ourselves love, compassion, and forgiveness regardless of what we've done. Welcome to the

First 15 podcast. The Our scripture for today comes from Proverbs 28, verse 13.

Scripture says,

Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper,

but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

As Christians striving to love others well and live in obedience to the commands of Christ,

we often are harder on ourselves than our Heavenly Father is.

If we are ever going to experience the depths of God's love in every season,

we must learn to forgive ourselves.

In Brennan Manning's book, Abbas Child,

The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging,

he writes a powerful statement that has the ability to both guide us to a greater lifestyle

of peace and open the door of our hearts to greater affections from our Heavenly Father.

He says this, but we cannot assume that he feels about us

the way we feel about ourselves,

unless we love ourselves compassionately, intensely, and freely.

In human form, Jesus revealed to us what God is like.

He exposed our projections for the idolatry that they are

and gave us the way to become free of them. It takes a profound conversion to accept that God is

...