Day 12

“ and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood— ⁶ and He made us into a kingdom, priests to His God and Father—to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” Rev 1:5-6 NASB.

I play ‘social golf’. That means if you tee off and it doesn’t go so well, you can play a mulligan (pull out another ball and do it again without penalty.) The chance to start over now and then takes the pressure off and makes the whole game more enjoyable. Computers have a similar feature, the “undo” key. Whenever your finger slips and hits a key that totally skews everything, and you have no clue what went wrong or how to fix it, you just hit the undo key and everything is restored the way it was before your mistake.

The analogies are not perfect, of course. But something like a mulligan happens in your life when you give yourself to Jesus. There’s a chance to start over, to undo the guilt and burden of the past. The blood of Jesus frees us from sin that means that His death makes it possible for us to break the chains of the past, to have a fresh start, to be forgiven. The blood of Jesus frees us not only from sin, but from fear, the fear that something we do will make us unacceptable to Him. The fear that our best will never be good enough. I don’t know about you, but I could use a mulligan now and then.

Praise God that we are not prisoners of the past, that our sins can be forgiven and that we are free to start over again.