Feel like a failure?  Ashamed to follow Christ?
The accuser is Satan – he is the one who not only tempts us but he accusers us night and day.
Praise God for the Holy Spirit – the advocate who is like the defender of a court case who takes the defence for us.
The Prosecutor Satan keeps bringing up your shame and drags it in front of you constantly accusing you and letting you know just how deep is your sin.
When we first come to Christ we realise through the working of the amazing Holy Spirit that we are indeed sinners in need of repentance and when we come acknowledging our sin, then He washes us clean through His sacrifice on Calvary.
That is our GUILT is washed away – God sees us a righteous because when He looks at us He sees what Jesus did to make us that way.
But SHAME is entirely different. SHAME is reliving our past – going back to it time and time again and if we keep doing this then we can pull apart our very faith that brought us to Jesus in the first place.
Many people have forgone the delight in Jesus to live a life of burdens and shame, unable to forgive themselves and thinking that they are ‘just too bad’ to be saved  at all. It’s such a tragedy and so so wrong. God’s amazing gift of salvation is free and holy and Satan wants to drag our faces in the dirt and mud of this world. He would do and does anything to distract us from the truth that God loves us with an all-consuming love.
Satan loves to do this, He loves to get our mind off the sin itself, which is freely forgiven if we repent, and keep our minds dwelling on ourselves and the shame. The longer we allow ourselves to wallow in our (forgiven) sin then the quicker we are to turn that (forgiven) sin into shame. And shame is what drives a wedge between us and God – jeopardising and endangering our faith.
If we dwell constantly on our shame we will eventually believe Satan’s lie that we are failures and have travelled the sin path far too long to be saved. This is completely the exact opposite of what God intended for us when we accepted His free gift of salvation and repented of our sin in the first place.
God on the other hand will convict you of your sin. If you let Him deal with it then He will forgive you – if you let your sin shame you then your faith will suffer and you will wander away from the very one who gave His life to save you.
Conviction is the greatest gift that God can give you – its the time when he singles you out and sets your thoughts, aims and eventually your will.
Conviction is when God speaks to you. It’s that very special time when you and God are in close contact. Satan has a very good reason to make us ‘drop the ball’ of our faith. He wants us to lose our confidence in coming to God in prayer and trust.
Jesus died so that we can do just that – He died so that we can boldly come to God – so that we can confidently know that God loves us regardless of what we have done or where we have been in our past lives.
If we trust God He will guide us through His Spirit on how to overcome our struggles. How?  By ceasing to focus on our pasts because what has been forgiven by God has been forgotten. We have been spun a HUGE lie by Satan that our past is still attached to us. Focus instead on the wondrous and incredible solution to the our sin crisis. JESUS!
Discover the strength that God can give us. Don’t let Satan  try to convince us that we are defined by what we did or when we fell in our past which is actually shame – Guilt doesn’t make us what we are but shame can make us believe that what we did is what we are,
You are not defined by your struggles – its in your struggles that God speaks to us. We can grow through struggles – God can make us free and when He frees us we are free indeed. Take heart and let’s build on our past not wallow in it.