"Release Yourself"

Pastor Laura Guy

September 14, 2008

Here's an instant replay of what happened in worship:

We heard Pastor Laura talk about an episode of Oprah she saw where a grandmother shared the painful story of accidentally running over her grandson. The woman cried, "I can never forgive myself." Her family assured her that they were not angry, but she continued to beat herself up, to lock herself in a prison of her own making. As a result, her other grandchildren no longer had a grandma who played and sang with them.
We thought about those words, "I can never forgive myself." We say them all the time, about things that aren't important, but for some people, they truly withhold forgiveness from themselves, over something that happened in their past due to carelessness, ignorance, bad judgment, or just plain sinfulness. For others, it's not so much about forgiving the past as it is getting rid of the tapes in our head that tell us we're not good enough and we never will be. All of these are prisons we stay in, even after God has tried to release us.
We read Leviticus 19:18, the first time the Golden Rule is found in the Bible. God tells us to "love your neighbor as yourself," but how can we love others if we do not love ourselves? Self-love is really about seeing ourselves the way God sees us. If we say cruel and ugly things about ourselves - out loud or in our head - how does that make God feel? We are His beloved children. In the story of the prodigal son, the father welcomes the wayward child with a robe and sandals and a ring - all signifying his return not just to his home but to his family. What if the son said, "I'm not worthy of these," and threw them on the ground, remaining in his smelly pig clothes? How would the father feel? Isn't that what we do when we ask God for forgiveness but we refuse to offer it to ourselves?
We closed our eyes and tried to see ourselves as God sees us - not with our flaws and faults, but as beloved children. We also offered God the tapes, the audio files in our heads, that tell us we're not good enough, and we allowed God to give us a new audio file, one that simply says, "I am a beloved child of God."
We celebrated communion around the table, praising God for helping release us from our prisons.