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“If you ask for forgiveness, but you do not forgive yourself, does He still forgive you?”

God’s mercy is greater than human mercy, and if you are in his grace, then when you fall, he will step in and lift you up. I think all Christians, even the Apostles, have to struggle with the fact that it is more difficult for us to forgive ourselves than it is for God to forgive us.

Something that helped me is to think of it like this: God is our true Father, loving us more perfectly than any earthly parent. When you are a child and fall and hurt yourself, you run to your parent, not away from them. So, with God, when we fall, we should run to him, without fear that He will turn away from us.

The fear that we feel is a trap of the enemy, for he is the one who wants to convince us that God is angry with us and won’t forgive. We should rightly fear God, for that is the beginning of loving God, but once we have that love and faith, then we can approach God in humility without fear, through the ministration of Christ.