When I first started walking with the Lord, my biggest obstacle to really engaging, feeling like I was heard, and experiencing a touch from God was this overwhelming sense of condemnation. It hit me every time I tried to move out of the dark space I was in and nearer to the light and heat of love that people told me was emanating from a closer intimacy with God. It was so bad that I was convinced that, when I prayed, all my words hit a brass ceiling and fell back to the ground before I ever finished. 

I wrestled with this constantly - always feeling guilty, ashamed, unworthy, unloved and unlovable, unaccepted… Always feeling not enough. It tormented and tortured me and kept me far away from God. 

And it blamed all of it on God too. 

He was the reason why I felt so bad and if I stayed away from Him, I rationalized, then I wouldn’t feel bad anymore. Easy peasy. 

All of that came to an abrupt halt one night when my spiritual father, Dr. Nathaniel Duffey III, preached the house DOWN with a message called “The Shepherd & The Door”. I started becoming acquainted with the truth that God loved me and desired to be - and indeed was - much closer to me than I was aware or even comfortable with. 

I came to realize that my only accuser was/is the enemy of my soul and future; the enemy that used half-recalled/badly reassembled memories against a subconscious that had not yet been touched by the hand and love of God.

For the first time, I realized that God was not condemning me at all. That any judgment that was due had already been exacted and paid and there was no shame, or guilt, or judgment applicable to me anymore. 

I was free. 

And God wasn’t mad at me. 

Fast forward 20 years, and you’d find me sitting on a beach tangling with this old foe; shocked and wondering what recesses it had emerged from after so long a time. I had not dealt with this spirit for more than fifteen years so it took me a minute to recognize it’s cold, familiar touch. 

I hadn’t done anything “bad” or even anything about which I was ashamed. But there it was; stalking the outer edges of my soul. And that’s the thing: you don’t have to actually DO anything wrong, illegal, or immoral for condemnation to come knocking on your door. 

Condemnation rides on the idea that you are a ‘wrong person’. That’s all that is required: that you agree that you are a wrong person, deserve unending punishment (even if it’s just in one tiny area), and that judgment shouldn’t be lifted until you’ve (somehow!) paid all in full. 

Honestly, this thinking and methodology is the way many of us were raised by our well-meaning parents and that obstacle is what we bring into our relationship with God. It may also follow some of the same steps many of us now use to train our own kids...

Forget any privileges or having your needs/desires met until the penalty is paid. Throw concepts like mercy and grace out. There’s no room for that. Right standing and full access to God immediately?? Fugghedaboutit! 

When we feel condemned, we also feel rejected; alone and on our own to find resolution and absolution. And when our interpretation of God says He is condemning and rejecting us - He who is supposed to be the one who loves, cares for, and provides for us - why wouldn’t we try to put as much distance between us as possible? 

And that is all that condemnation seeks to do: to make us feel guilty, to separate us from talking to and communing with God, and to make us feel like we have no choice but to go it alone. And every one of those are lies. 

So there I was - being creeped on by my old nemesis - when finally I’d had enough. “What IS this??!” I said aloud. Silence. And then it rolled its big ugly head around so I could see it a little better. 

Condemnation. 

‘Oh I know you,’ I thought. ‘What are YOU doing here?’ 

It had that slimy feeling of an old ex that shows up years after a nasty and prolonged breakup. WHAT was it doing there? WHY was it sneering at me in that knowing way as it slid through that barely-cracked door I hadn’t noticed?  

I didn’t know how it started but I was DETERMINED to end it again for good. I was determined to scour every nuance and spend AS MUUUUUCH time as necessary picking it apart. Yes that felt good! That felt right. That felt...holy. 

But God was saying something else. He didn’t care at all and started sweeping it away from me like household dust before I could fully vocalize my guilt and agree with a condemnation He wasn’t giving. 

He showed me that my desire to investigate every part of it was, itself, a lowkey attempt to encourage and keep it alive in my life. God was saying ‘You said you’re sorry; I know you are. You’re already forgiven anyway. Let it go...I have’ right as I was suiting up for that full-on amateur biopsy. 

We may forget Jesus’ sacrifice and payment for every debt of righteousness we’d ever owe but God never does. 

I didn’t know what to do next. I sat there with my head down and my eyes fixated on the sand - caught in the throes of my necromancy - when suddenly I felt prompted to look up to the BIGGEST brightest rainbow sitting over the ocean directly in front of me. 

“OH MY GOD...!!” I gasped before I could catch myself. And then whoooosh! Every thought I had went right out the window. 

In that instant - in that eternal and pregnant moment - I was reminded of the only thing that matters; God‘s covenant to: 

• always love me

• always cover me

• always wash me

• always anoint my head with oil

• always honor me, and

• always see me as I am

Holy. Clean. His. 

And that’s how He sees you too 💞

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

“Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. 

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. 

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” ~ Romans 8:33-39