The Blood of Jesus

R.T. Kendall: You’ve had exactly the same problem that I’ve had. My problem as strange as this may seem, was to realize totally forgiving myself is what God wanted me to do. That was for me the big hurdle. People ask, “how do you do it?” Well, maybe not all would fit into my shoes but for me, for me to see this is what God wants of me, because I felt guilty in accepting this. I don’t deserve this. How dare I in one stroke just let myself off the hook? Then I realized, “but R.T., this is what God wants you to do.” And when I saw that, I was free! I was free!

Joyce: Yes. I’ll never forget a friend of mine. She and I were pretty close and we spent a lot of time together back in the 70’s when we first got into a real serious relationship with God. We went to a lot of meetings and were in a lot of prayer lines, requesting prayer. One night she and I went up to the altar to get prayer from the pastor, as well as a lot of other people, and the pastor — the man speaking — looked at her and he said, “what’s your problem?” she said, “I hate myself.” He said, “you hate yourself.” She said, “yes, I hate myself.” He backed up and looked at her and said, “who do you think you are?” She was like… Expecting pity and here he is correcting her. He said, “who do you think you are? If God loved you so much that he sent his only son to die for you, then who are you to hate yourself?” I thought that was a really good approach to that. It’s like God paid a tremendous price for us to be able to live free from self-hatred and unforgiveness toward ourselves, and all he’s asking us to do is just receive it.

R.T. Kendall: The blood of Jesus does basically two things. There are two theological words: Expiation — that is what the blood does for us, washes away our sins; propitiation — that’s what the blood does for God. And when we realize what the blood does for God, how dare we think that we can somehow atone for what we’ve done wrong. When I saw this, I was absolutely set free knowing that God wants us to do it. And by the way, hating yourself is funny enough a form of self-love. People don’t realize that. They think, “oh, well, I don’t deserve anything.” But it’s self-love that causes that.

Joyce Meyer Online – Discipline is what we must have to make us do the things we should do in order to have the things we say we want to have.