Today, we're pleased to share with you an audio essay written and read by Lydia Brownback,

entitled, If I Believe Jesus Has Forgiven My Sins, Why Do I Still Feel Guilty?

Lydia is the author of Flourish, How the Love of Christ Frees Us from Self-focus from Crossway.

If I believe Jesus is forgiven my sins, why do I still feel guilty?

Written and read by Lydia Brownback.

Past sins.

That thing we said, that thing we did. If only we could take it back. A memory of sharp words spoken in anger. The night we went along with the crowd or maybe left the crowd and

wish we hadn't, the haunting of regret can be relentless. We'd love to erase certain things with a

simple stroke of a life und undo key, but we know all

too well that words cannot be unsaid and past events cannot be undone. How can we live well today

when we can't shake the past, even the confessed and forgiven past? We trust that we've been forgiven because Christ paid for all our sins when he died on the cross,

but the memory isn't erased and the effects on us and on those we hurt can linger long.

What can help any of us who live under a weight of self-condemnation?

Some carry that weight not because of what they've said or done, but because of what others have said and done to them. It's revealed in the

woman who regularly puts herself down. We hear her say things like, I'm such a failure. I'm a

terrible friend. I could never get involved in

church. I have nothing to offer. They've come to believe what they've been told about themselves,

perhaps from a very young age. I think it's safe to assume that the majority of women in the

sex trade, whether pornography or prostitution,

live under an unbearable weight of self-condemnation. But for most of them, that weight began

to press long before they're bartering sex for money. No little girl says, I want to be a

prostitute when I grow up. But if she's sexually abused, she might come to believe,

...