"A Clean Slate"

Have you ever felt like a total loser? That most of your life you've blown almost everything you've ever done and you're nearly overwhelmed by a voice whispering in your ear, "you should've done this, you failed at being a ________, it's all your fault that this happened!", and the list just goes on and on?

I'm pretty sure we've all been there a time or two. Some of us are better at handling the lies we're fed, some know the tools (confessing God's truth) to rise above it, but even for the best of us, it can get to be overwhelming. I'd like to share with you an experience I had with this and the revelation God gave me that really set me free.

It happened several years ago when those whispers were at an all time high. I was so bombarded I could barely function for several days, didn't want to get out of bed, and simply wanted to cry all day long. My dear hubby asked me what was wrong, but I said I couldn't even talk about it. He knows not to push too hard but he also knows that when I get really down or crabby, it's usually due to a bunch of things that I've allowed to pile up. He must have been praying for me because eventually I started peeling off the layers and telling him what was bugging me.

I told him how I felt like such a failure as a person, wife, mother, friend - you name it. I felt like I'd let so many people down and made so many mistakes that I could never raise my head up again, let alone ever hope to make it up to them. There were a lot of should've, would've, and could'ves with a lot of if-only's mixed in.

You know, our enemy - the "father of lies" - loves to be a sneak, creeping around us whispering his lies to us and often we're not even aware of it until they really pile up and threaten to overwhelm us. It wasn't like he was saying to me "Oh you lied about such and such, or you stole something". I am not perfect and have probably done some of those things, but this was even harder to take as it really was undermining my character in things that were very important to me. (Not that being truthful or not stealing aren't - don't get me wrong!)

My hubby can come up with some really wise things sometimes and his response to me after I shared all of this was, "Well, you have Jesus' track record now, yours doesn't matter anymore!"

I chewed on that the rest of the day and after we went to bed that night, he promptly fell asleep, but as I laid there and prayed I suddenly saw a vision or picture that I believe without a doubt was from God.

I saw a white/dry erase board with a big circle drawn in the middle, filling nearly the whole board, with the entire circle being filled in by black ink. Then I saw a large eraser come across the circle wiping it totally away. On the back of the eraser I saw the name "Jesus". He was wiping my slate clean with his blood!

I love it when I can "see" things like this in a physical sense. Now I am more on the alert to this tactic the enemy tried to use on me. He already knew that if he accused me of lying, stealing or something really obvious like that - I'd eventually repent and then remind him that it's under the blood of Jesus since he died for all my sins way before I ever committed any. But this was so subtle, attacking my character, and caught me off-guard. Just remember that no matter what - Jesus loves you and accepts you now and forever once you've asked him to be your savior.

I'm not saying we should just go about living like hell - doing whatever we want and thinking we won't suffer consequences for things we do that aren't good for us or others. We will reap what we sow. But once you've given your life over to Jesus, his fountain of living water is a continuous flow - it never ends. His grace means we can't earn his salvation, but it also means we can't un-earn it. We can really mess up our lives if we choose to, but he is also our redeemer. If we take our messes to him, change our minds (that's what repent means), and seek his help to change, he'll take that mess and turn it into something good as only he can.