Revelation 1:5-6 (NLT): All glory to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by shedding his blood for us. He has made us a Kingdom of priests for God his Father. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen.
This is human nature: we forget what people have done for us. We get so focused on what we want, and we forget what we’ve been given. This is dangerous, because a thankless heart becomes a discouraged heart. We get most discouraged when we forget all God has done for us. We begin to pile shame and guilt on ourselves. We focus only on our problems and the world’s problems. But when we remember what Jesus has done, we remember He overcame the world. We remember that God took all our shame, all our guilt, all our sin and piled it on Jesus' shoulders and dealt with it once and for all on the cross.
Christ carried that junk already, so you don’t have to. If you are in Christ, you’ve been set free from your sins and from your past. You’re only carrying the stuff you choose to carry. Set it down. Throw it down. And grab life with both hands. This is what Jesus came to do. We need to remember what He did, because it defines who we are.