Tag: forgive

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3 Ways to Build Confidence in Christ

Confidence is something many people spend their lives chasing. Lots of money is spent every year by people trying to look and feel more confident. But true confidence doesn’t come from what is external; confidence is at a deep, soul level, within us. And true confidence isn’t purchased, achieved, or earned, it is given to us as a gift from God. Jesus Christ is the only solid, secure foundation (1 Corinthians 3:11) on which we can have true, lasting confidence.

That said, we can do things that can help keep our confidence in Christ strong, as there are many things that will consistently try to come against us, and tempt us to doubt. We need confidence to endure the tests, trials, and storms that all of us will face in life. A few months after I started Life with the King in 2019, I wrote a post called Confidence in the Promises of God about the confidence that comes with believing God’s promises in Scripture. I shared three key promises to rely on, and today I want to offer something deeper still. Here are three ways (there are many more!) to build confidence in our Lord, Jesus Christ:

1. Seek the Depth To Which You Are Loved By God

We are so incredibly loved by God. He loved us so much that He gave us the written Word, an enduring love letter written for us to know His heart towards us. He loved us so much that He gave us His Son, Jesus, to die so that our sins could be atoned for by His blood, shed to save us from death (Romans 8:2, Hebrews 2:14). He loved us so much that He gave us the Holy Spirit, to give us power, comfort, wisdom, and discernment as we seek to live according to God’s will for us. The Holy Spirit dwells within all believers (Acts 2:38, Romans 5:5, 1 Corinthians 6:19). These are just a few of the ways we are cared for and protected by God; there are countless ways He forgives, shows grace, and is kind in uniquely personal ways to each of us on a daily basis. Caring for us and protecting us was His plan all along. “When I thought, ‘My foot slips,’ your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up” (Psalm 94:18). God’s love protects us. As the Truth about the depth of God’s love for us becomes clearer, our confidence can do nothing but grow! We can be confident in God’s love for us.

2. Develop a Trusting Relationship with God

It is our relationship with God that brings us joy and light (guidance, clarity) in life (Psalm 97). We have confidence that we have final victory over evil and idolatry (Psalm 97:9-11) because of who God is. Scripture often refers to knowing God’s name, which means knowing His character, what He is like, and what He cares about (for more, see the Characteristics of God series). To Truly know what God is like, we need to go to the Source Himself. We can’t rely on other people’s relationships with Him, we need to get to know Him for ourselves. Seeking out His heart by talking to Him, and earnestly listening for His voice, build relationship with God. In that relationship, trust and confidence of the security of His love can grow. “And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you” (Psalm 9:10).

3. Believe and Rely on God’s Forgiveness

God’s forgiveness forms the foundation of our confidence (Psalm 99:8). “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight” (Ephesians 1:7-8). We rely on being forgiven by God through Jesus Christ. We easily forget what an amazing luxury it is to be forgiven. It is our state of being forgiven that allows us to confidently walk with Him. Being forgiven means we are securely within His grace, because of our relationship with Him.

To recap, revelation of God’s amazing love leads to trusting relationship with Him, which leads us to living confidently in a state of knowing we are forgiven. This isn’t something we do once in life, it is something I’ve had to start fresh with many times. But every time, God wipes the slate clean in His merciful forgiveness. He is ready and willing to help us to strengthen our confidence daily. We can deeply experience the freedom and victory Jesus has already gifted to us by living confidently and being confident in Him.

Confidence doesn’t originate in us, it comes from God Himself, who is the Source of who we are. It seems to me that we are only as confident as how much we trust in His love, relationship, and forgiveness.

May God help us confidently overcome through Jesus Christ and our full reliance on Him! Amen.

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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Letting Go of the Past

All of us reach certain points in our lives when we have to reconcile with the past. Whether we realize it or not, we all have a relationship with the past: what has happened, and how we perceive what has happened. The past may require self-forgiveness for the ways we chose to react or not react, and for the ways we perceived things in a way that hurt ourselves or others. It may require us to ask forgiveness from other people, and from God. It may also require us to forgive others. It’s when our past starts to get in the way of our present that we need to take a closer look, and with God’s grace, let it go.

In the midst of this rather uncomfortable but necessary place, I take heart in the words written by Paul, who, before putting faith in Jesus Christ, had quite a messy past indeed. He wrote about forgetting what was behind him, thanks to Christ’s saving work in his life, in exchange for something much more fruitful; “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained” (Philippians 3:13-16).

As we talked about last week, faith (Philippians 3:9) is the foundation for this “upward call of God in Christ Jesus;” faith is at the heart of life with God. It is faith that drives us forward in our relationship with Jesus. Followers of Jesus have faith that there is eternal life for us, resurrected with Christ. God’s transformative power works on our hearts and minds (Romans 12:2) and allows us to let go of the past, the things that came before following Jesus. In Christ, the past no longer has a hold on us. We no longer need to strive to earn approval, forgiveness, or redemption—in fact, there is no way we could ever even come close to earning these things at all! Only Jesus can provide deliverance from our sins, and the only way is through our faith. Jesus is enough to cover our past and whatever may be holding us back. May we believe the Truth, trusting that our relationship with Jesus is enough to free us from the past.

Paul had an unshakable faith. His letter to the Philippians, written while imprisoned, is so powerfully faith-filled that it is encouraging to us even today, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8). Paul’s words of bold faith, that knowing Jesus is absolutely worth more than everything else in life, including that which was behind him, is incredibly empowering. Jesus empowers us to let go of what came before, and go all in with Him in faith. He will never let us down.

So, whenever our past is brought to mind, whenever it discourages us, disheartens us, or feels too big and too much to overcome, may we remember what is True. Jesus has already overcome our past. Let’s remember to ask Him what He has to say about our past. We no longer are bound by what came before, Jesus paid for it all.

May our faith be encouraged, and may we be empowered to let go of what is behind us to reach God’s upward call for our lives in Jesus Christ. He has overcome. Amen!

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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7 Years of Life with the King

I invite you to celebrate with me as Life with the King turns 7 this week! Last year, I wrote about the birth of this blog in my post, Seeking Life’s Deeper Truth on July 24th, 2025.

This post today also happens to be the 100th Life with the King blog post. Halleluiah, all glory be to God!

After 7 years, while 7 is known as a number of completion, I somehow get the feeling it’s just beginning. Some statistics: blog visitors have increased nearly seven times in the last two years. My most-accessed post is the very first blog ever posted in July 2019, What To Do When You Struggle With Faith, with over 1,250 views. The blog is meant to be shared with people who might need encouragement, who might be seeking Truth, and who might feel lonely in their faith journey. There has always been a hunger for Truth, Life, and God, but I’m seeing it multiply just in this blog’s stats.

God has given us all gifts to share for the good of all people, and He will give you what you need to make His plans for your gifts a reality, even if it takes 7 years or 77 years. Never give up. I’ve learned in my own life with the King that whatever God has given you to do, whether writing a blog or not, is worth doing. He will refine and transform you through it. He will help us see it through.

I wasn’t qualified to write about faith because of great faith or anything like that, but instead because of the shortcomings I had with faith. It was my doubt and failure to have faith that put me on a journey of seeking Truth and starting this blog. I knew what it was like to do the wrong thing and live the wrong way in God’s eyes. I knew I was a sinner 7 years ago, and I know I am a sinner now. But the more years go by, the more I know that “…God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). It’s all about what Jesus did for us, not what we have done, wrong or right. In putting our faith in Jesus’ sacrifice for us, we are, rather unfairly, forgiven. Halleluiah!

I was reading about that “unfairness” today in Romans 5. It reads, “one trespass led to condemnation for all men” (Romans 5:18), which sounds pretty unfair to me. There have been times in my life where I felt completely trapped by and resentful of that tie to sin that I could do nothing about whatsoever. It was inherited simply by being a human being just like Adam and Eve were human beings.

But there is hope, for the very next thing Paul writes is, “so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men” (Romans 5:18). Jesus’ act of righteousness, sacrificing Himself for us to pay the penalty, makes inheriting justification and life just as easy for us to have as our inherited sin! “For as by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). Adam disobeyed God, Jesus obeyed God. We were made sinners by Adam, and we were made righteous by Jesus. It sounds simplistic until you realize the poetic depth and profundity of what Jesus did to undo the curse, oppression, and lordship of sin and death over the lives God lovingly crafted for us to live with Him in freedom and peace. We are loved enough by God for Him to bring that life, freedom, and peace about to completion (Philippians 1:6).

It’s all about what God has done for us, it’s not about us. It’s not about striving to be perfect, it’s all about Jesus. The reality is that we truly are desperate for Him, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1-2). We’re just so prone to forget. But even in our forgetfulness, there is so much grace from God, “For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:16-17). There is grace upon grace for each one of us. Jesus is the Truth. Halleluiah!

If you’re a longtime subscriber, please know that I’m so grateful for you! I’m amazed every post is actually being read, even after 7 years of writing—thank you. And if you aren’t already, please take a moment to subscribe.

May you experience God’s kindness, peace, and grace in your own life with the King. Amen.

“For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and like & follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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Grace for Sleep

How much does sleep impact your day-to-day life? Do you have to be intentional to get healthy sleep? For the majority of people living in Western culture, sleep is often talked about like a luxury, a commodity, or something to be envied. Sleep is a gift God gives (Psalm 127:2). It’s also been a huge struggle for me, as I wrote in Falling Awake. But today, I want to write a bit more about physical, literal sleep.

Have you ever experienced your eyes becoming heavy? All of a sudden, you can lose track of the conversation or tv show or song or task at hand, and just feel powerless to keep from falling asleep. As someone who has experienced insomnia for much of my life, this level of being tired is usually a welcomed state of being. However, there are times when being asleep is more than a little embarrassing, like with Peter, James, and John in the Garden of Gethsemane.

In both the Gospel of Matthew and Mark, we find the story of Jesus’ disciplines falling asleep in Gethsemane, after Jesus had told them to watch while He prayed: “And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, ‘So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.’ And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. Then he came to the disciples and said to them, ‘Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners‘” (Matthew 26:40-45). Jesus, even on the night He was being chased down for arrest, showed compassionate, loving grace toward the weakness of the flesh in his best friends.

He knew their spirits were willing to keep watch and pray, and their hearts were in the right place. However, their physical bodies could not keep up with their hearts and they, seemingly beyond their control, in weakness, “took their rest.” Paul wrote, “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). When we are weak and we surrender our weakness to Christ Jesus, in His great mystery He somehow becomes our strength.

In our weakness, we can surrender to be led by God, as a sheep to our Good Shepherd. The prophet Ezekiel used this analogy, “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice” (Ezekiel 34:16). Everything provided for the sheep is from their Shepherd.

It follows that rest and sleep are the gifts of God for us. Rest is built into the very Creation, darkness of night being a daily time for rest, and the slower seasons of plant productivity being a longer time for rest taken by the earth. In a culture of overwork and little sleep, it’s important to remember that the grace of God can be demonstrated to us by rest and sleep. If we aren’t paying attention, we may miss this facet of His grace for us.

I am not saying that trying to stay awake is always disobedience; it also can imply a great God-fearing desire or effort on the part of a person. King David said, “I will not enter my house or get into my bed, I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob” (Psalm 132:3-5). When our work is for the Lord and we’re within His will and purpose for us, He will give us the strength we need to stay awake to accomplish it if necessary. But those periods require discernment. Those periods are often only for a season. Rest is a need, and a gift God wants to give us as our trustworthy Shepherd; resting in Him, we experience His peace.

God the Father doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t need to! It is because of His work that we can rest: “He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.” (Psalm 121:3-5). That God is our keeper is such Good News! God shows us grace in every way, and one of them is to give us the assurance and rest of His strong Presence in our weakness.

I had a minor Peter, James, and John moment just this week. I fell asleep when I really needed to stay awake, and a domino effect of consequences followed. At first, I was upset with myself, but I soon realized God knew my heart, just like He knew that of His disciples’ that night in the Garden. He had already forgiven my weakness. I just needed to thank God for His understanding and let go to take the next step with Him.

While God made us all fearfully and wonderfully (Psalm 139:14), Jesus knew our weakness firsthand. Not only was He fully human, He saw how his best (human) friends couldn’t stay awake with Him. He knew then and knows now, we are jars of clay (2 Corinthians 4:17), not steel. “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:13-14). Even in Jesus’ most difficult moment of anguish in His life to that moment in the Garden of Gethsemane, He showed incredible grace for the fragility of our human flesh, and continues to show us His amazing grace for our weaknesses. Can I get an amen?

If you ever feel reluctant to give yourself grace like me, remember in Jesus’ grace, you are already forgiven. He knows you are human, and He knows your heart. Leave unforgiveness at the cross, and find rest in His presence and peace today.

“The Lord bless you and keep you;  the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” (Numbers 6:24-26).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and like & follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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A Closer Look at God’s Forgiveness

Do we really need to forgive ourselves?  

I’ve been seriously wrestling with this question for five years. I’ve fervently tried, but I was never able to feel settled with the statement that I had “forgiven myself.” 

The thing is, I knew I hadn’t fully. I wasn’t even sure I could. But I couldn’t ignore the fact that I am dust and just couldn’t shake the truth that without God’s grace through Jesus I am unforgivable, flawed, and hopelessly sinful. That is what makes God’s grace and Jesus’ sacrifice for us so incredibly difficult to comprehend. Offering grace to ourselves is not always an easy task, even on our best days. 

Lately I’ve been working very hard on accepting the truth, even if it’s not pretty or what I or others would want to hear. Jesus had to come and forgive me; I can’t forgive myself on my own. Without His grace (upon grace…) I am not gracious enough toward myself to forgive fully. I can’t pardon myself from the sins I’ve committed or fix my fallen nature. I can’t absolve myself of guilt. Only Jesus can do that.  

Forgiving ourselves is not done on our own strength, it’s about leaning on the forgiveness Jesus already offers to us.

I can’t shake the truth that I desperately need Jesus’ forgiveness. It is His forgiveness that allows me to forgive others, and myself. We are not meant to live under the weight of heavy guilt; instead, we are meant to live freely and lightly (Matthew 11:30). As He calls us to follow Him, He invites us to come to Him and accept the forgiveness He has for us. 

In accepting His forgiveness, we believe the unbelievable, that what God says really is true, and that Jesus’ work on the cross really was enough. We are made in His image, so we all have the capacity to forgive, but Jesus teaches us how to do this. Jesus enables us to forgive, wholly and truly, through and through.   

Through His amazing grace, we may extend complete grace to ourselves and others.

We can start to see ourselves through His eyes when we accept His forgiveness. And we might need to choose to accept it several times every day! Just as we have to choose to take up our cross daily, we must also choose to accept His forgiveness as we continue to make mistakes, doubt our own faith, or struggle to show grace to ourselves and others. 

Forgiveness is a choice God made in relation to us. We do not have to do anything to earn it, a strange feeling in our world where so much must be earned. Accepting God’s choice to forgive us despite what we may feel about ourselves at any given moment isn’t always so easy. (I mean, did He see what I did? If I’m disgusted in me, then surely He is, right?) Wrong. He loves and forgives us unconditionally. And He knew that you were going to do whatever it is you did, but that doesn’t change a thing. 

Jesus already paid the full price for our forgiveness. As we believe this, the Holy Spirit lives in us and loves us as part of His own family. This is the fact; feelings that keep us from believing we can be forgiven are not fact.  

It’s okay to give your feelings time to catch up with facts. 

It is not okay, however, to let feelings blind you to facts. The facts are that God loves you, Jesus paid the price for you, and that you are forgiven and free in Him. How amazing that we do not have to do anything more than believe to receive His forgiveness! And even more than this, His forgiveness empowers us to forgive to greater depths than we ever could on our own strength.                  

Yet, we are ever-tempted to give in to the false feelings that are not of God, of guilt and shame. For some of us, these feelings might be a comfortable place to be. But these feelings were never meant to linger and we were never meant to dwell among them. Jesus said, “...it is necessary that temptations come…” (Matthew 18:7). Temptations and disobedience will happen, but it doesn’t erase what God has done or who we are in Him at all. Guilt and shame must be dealt with yet moved through, for we are meant to dwell in Jesus’ freedom. 

When God leads us through temptations to the other side, He shows us who He is, for He walks with us the whole way.

Not only am I aware that I am dust, but God is aware too (Psalm 103:14), and He has mercy for that. He knows we will be tempted to choose not to believe the facts and go with our feelings. 

In fact, God uses even these temptations for His glory, “For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all” (Romans 11:32). He gives us no reason to fear. He knows we need Him, and He forgives us for being human.   

It’s okay to accept God’s forgiveness.  

In reference to Romans 8:33, the ESV Study Bible notes, “Satan, their enemies, or even their own consciences may bring charges against God’s elect, but those who have come to faith in Christ will never be found guilty, for God declares them to be right before all the world at the divine tribunal.”

This means we will face charges in our own thoughts and consciences, and it’s not a question of if but when–this will happen. It does not change the fact that Jesus Christ cleared us of our charges and forgave us. 

Asking God to forgive us, and believing He does, is enough.  

Paul wrote, “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law (Romans 3:28). We do not have to work and do extra to earn forgiveness. Forgiveness is not earned, it is given. He asks us to have faith in Him; His forgiveness for us doesn’t depend on our striving or achieving. 

We don’t have to strive to earn freedom from guilt, instead, we are invited to have faith that we are forgiven. 

In Matthew, it says, “with God all things are possible” (19:26). As we struggle with forgiving ourselves, let us take heart in knowing that we can rest because of who Jesus is, what He has done, and what He, even now, is doing on our behalf; “Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (Romans 8:34). 

Not only has he paid the price for our forgiveness, but He continually works on our behalf; we have no need to strive because of Him.

May we let it all rest in Jesus. 

“God is for us, so who can be against us” (Romans 8:31)?

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to the blog, it helps me continue writing about Life with the King. Grace and peace.  

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