No, the title is not a misprint. IF YOU ARE RIGHTEOUS, YOU HAVE MADE NO MISTAKES. I thank God for giving me this message to share. Let me explain this idea. You have done things in your life that you are not proud of… some things that you resent, some things that you feel guilty about, some things that you feel are beyond forgiveness. Nothing is beyond forgiveness. And no one is refused redemption and deliverance. No one is turned away from salvation. No one is too bad to be made righteous. Whatever you have done in your life is excusable. Let me stall here. Just because you ask God to forgive you does not make you righteous. Hear me out. Read this again…

JUST BECAUSE YOU ASK GOD TO FORGIVE YOU DOES NOT MAKE YOU RIGHTEOUS.

Example- if you slap me, you can say you are sorry and I may forgive you. YOU HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN as far as I am concerned. OK? Now next time you slap me, I may forgive you again. Your slate is clean with me. You slap me again. I forgive you again, and your slate is again clean with me. However, you’ve learned nothing. Although you have been completely FORGIVEN, nothing has changed within YOU. You have learned that you can wrong me as often as you like and I will continue to forgive you. This has become appealing to you, and you are comfortable with the lie that Satan has convinced you is the truth- that as long as you are forgiven, everything is fine. Because as long as you keep slapping me, I may love you enough to keep forgiving you… but you are not kind enough to be welcomed into my home because I still fear that you may slap me. Do you follow this? As long as you keep sinning against God, His love for you compels Him to forgive you when you ask Him to, but when Judgment Day comes to pass, your soul has not changed, and you are not righteous enough to be welcomed into His heavenly home.

… this does not mean that you are not allowed to ask forgiveness of the same sin over again- you should never allow guilt to get in the way of your relationship with God!!! But know that if you have not REPENTED and mourned/grieved for your sins, you asking for forgiveness while still living in the same ways is not being validated by anything but mere words without any intention of a change of action. You have to be willing to set forth in motion of CHANGE in order to begin the process of becoming a righteous person, which is required for us to be allowed entry into the Kingdom of Heaven.

FORGIVENESS DOES NOT EQUAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.

A righteous man is one that has taken the experiences God has given him and used them to extract their lessons. He has made what others consider to be mistakes, but to him they are not mistakes. Now, if you slap me and you mourn for the wrong that you did to me, and you grieve in your spirit for hurting me, then you ask for my forgiveness, then you have honestly repented for your sin against me and that action has been taken from mistake status and made into a valuable lesson. Every wrong thing that you have done in your life after you have truly been saved is the same way. They were opportunities for education… they were chances that you have been given to be edified in your spirit. If you turn your life over to Christ and you have mourned and grieved for your sins and you have honestly repented and given God complete control over your life and you live according to His word, you have no reason to have feelings of guilt. You have no reason to have feelings of shame. Because every experience that you had was not a mistake- it was a stepping stone that brought you to the very minute that you gave your life to Jesus. It was a means to your own salvation. All of those things were simply your own testimony in the making… the path God chose for you to take so that once you welcomed Him into your heart, he could use those experiences to bring others to Him through your testimony. Make sense?

However, if you backslide, and you remain in sin, all of those things are transformed back into mistakes… because their lessons were not fully learned and the actions in themselves were evil and useless to the Lord. You have to realize that in everything you do, there are two forces at work… Righteousness and evil. There is no middle ground. God does not tango with Satan. There is nothing in this world that isn’t ‘too bad’… if it is not good, it’s evil. Satan uses stepping stones to get you comfortable with the small evils before he graduates you to the serious evils. Every small inch of temptation that you receive from him, you are placing yourself into his quicksand. When you put in a big toe, you may be able to pull yourself out of it alone. Once you place a foot in, it may be slightly more difficult, but it’s possible that you alone may pull out of it. After you have stepped in with both feet, the struggle gets harder. Once you are just knee deep, you are helpless to get out alone. The more you struggle to get free, the deeper you sink. You will need someone else. With a rope. When Satan has gotten you so confused and deceived that you have gotten covered in sin, Jesus is the only one that can help you… He is the only one that has the connections to save you. And God is the rope.

If you have not given your life to Christ as you read this, and you felt led to give up and let Him have control of the mess you have made in your life, it is time for you to pray. Admit to yourself, before God, that you are a sinner… and that you want to invite Jesus into your heart to be your Lord and Saviour!

“Lord, I come to You in prayer because I have made a mess in my life that I just can’t fix on my own. I have done things that I am not proud of, and I feel like something is missing from my soul that I haven’t been able to find. Father God, I have tried everything else to make my life complete and now I come to You asking for Your forgiveness and Your blessings on my life. I pray, Lord, that you will come into my heart and work on me. Show me how to live my life according to Your will and guide me into my destiny. Father, I want to seek You and I want to live my life to be pleasing in Your eyes above all else. In Jesus’ name I pray, AMEN!”

Welcome to the Heavenly Family. You have always been loved!

* Written by Kathleen Robertson June 12, 2006