Jesus called the devil ‘a liar and the father of lies.’ (John 8:44 ^NIV) Yet it’s so easy to fall into the trap of listening to past voices condemning us, as old echoes reverberate in our minds. The enemy’s accusations can leverage off past hurts to make us hide from God: ‘You’re not good enough. You don’t pray enough. Nobody could ever love you if they knew the real you. What you’ve done is unforgiveable. You’ll never receive God’s blessing.’ These are lies. Don’t let your past mistakes define your relationship with God. He doesn’t!

Paul said, ‘I do not do the good things I want to do… I do the bad things I do not want to do.’ (Romans 7:19 ^NCV) Like Paul, recognise that you’ve sinned but don’t get mired in guilt. Repent of the wrong you’ve done and repent of believing the lies of the enemy. Ask Jesus to empower your words and then press forward into a new day. After all, you can’t change the past. But Jesus is the One who offers you the chance to change the future. If you’re still thinking, ‘I don’t have a future. I’ve messed up too often,’ that’s the enemy, not the Lord.

God says your accuser been ‘cast down.’ (Revelation 12:10 ^KJV) So stand your ground, and remind him that ‘God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.’ Like all of us, you’ve probably made your fair share of mistakes. But positionally God sees you ‘in Christ’, so you’re ‘complete’, ‘justified’, and ‘accepted’. Conditionally you’re a work-in-progress—and He won’t give up on you!