{"id":41006,"date":"2026-07-19T22:16:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T05:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/?p=41006"},"modified":"2026-07-19T22:32:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T05:32:50","slug":"26-0720","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/26-0720\/","title":{"rendered":"Grace Restores Your Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Max Lucado<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Guilt sucks the life out of our souls. Grace restores it.<\/p>\n

No one had more reason to feel the burden of guilt than did the apostle Paul. He had orchestrated the deaths of Christians, an ancient version of a terrorist. Yet, Paul gave his guilt to Jesus. Period. He surrendered it to Jesus. As a result he could write, \u201cI am still not all I should be, but I am bringing all my energies to bear on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God is calling us up to heaven because of what Christ Jesus did for us\u201d (Philippians 3:13-14 TLB).<\/p>\n

What would the apostle say to the guilt-ridden? Simply this: Rejoice in the Lord\u2019s mercy. Trust in his ability to forgive. Cast yourself upon the grace of Christ and Christ alone!<\/p>\n

\"\"Read more\u00a0Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guilt sucks the life out of our souls. Grace restores it.<\/p>\n

No one had more reason to feel the burden of guilt than did the apostle Paul. He had orchestrated the deaths of Christians, an ancient version of a terrorist. Yet, Paul gave his guilt to Jesus. Period. He surrendered it to Jesus. As a result he could write, \u201cI am still not all I should be, but I am bringing all my energies to bear on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God is calling us up to heaven because of what Christ Jesus did for us\u201d (Philippians 3:13-14 TLB).<\/p>\n

What would the apostle say to the guilt-ridden? Simply this: Rejoice in the Lord\u2019s mercy. Trust in his ability to forgive. Cast yourself upon the grace of Christ and Christ alone!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-upwords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41008,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41006\/revisions\/41008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}