Living Beyond Yourself - Session 1 - Guilt and Self-Compassion

One of the things that came up in session 1 is the difficulty that people, especially women, tend to have with claiming forgiveness, with carrying around guilt and self-condemnation, despite our confession and God's promise to forgive us. Beth Moore brought us a wonderful quote with regard to this. From Brennan Manning's book Abba's Child:

Dare to live as a forgiven [person]. Take sides with [God] against your own self-evaluation.

If you aren't familiar with Brennan Manning's book, the following review describes it well (from The Book Report Network):

Manning begins by beckoning Christians to come out of hiding, the place to which we retreat out of shame or guilt in the misguided belief that God is berating us as harshly as we are berating ourselves.

It is only when we shed our false identity and accept the unconditional love of our Abba --- our heavenly "Daddy" --- that we can experience the passionate love relationship with Him that we have long craved.

Our fellow Morning Blend member, Beth, sent me an email this week, and suggested listening to a TED Talk by Kristin Neff on self-compassion. Beth said, "She [Kristin Neff] talks about the difference between self esteem and self compassion. Our culture and especially women seem to have a difficult time being gentle to ones self." Though Neff speaks from a secular and scientific point of view, she addresses this cultural problem in a way that might help up open ourselves to the forgiveness of God. Check it out here:

This also brought to mind for me, a discussion we had last year with regard to shame and regret. For that post and another wonderful TED talk, go here: Brené Brown: Listening to Shame.

Let us pray for each other to "come out of hiding" and be released from guilt, shame and regret, in order to be more fully open to the "Pouring In" of the Spirit of God and the "Pouring Forth" of the fruits of the Spirit from ourselves.