Lie #5: Your past is unredeemable.
The devil wants us to lose hope, to despair, and to place our trust in anything but God. One way he does this is by using our past sins against us and convincing us that we cannot be redeemed. He nags us and tells us that our sins will always be our downfall and that we are powerless against them.
Yet this is exactly the opposite of what Our Lord promises. By reading the Bible and listening to the words of scripture at Mass we can arm ourselves against the father of lies and know that God is our savior no matter what our past looks like.
Thigpen in the Manual For Spiritual Warfare says the way to combat this lie is to always keep close the second theological virtue: hope.
“The hope of salvation is a helmet, the Apostle Paul declares (1 Thes. 5:8). It’s essential for protecting the mind. The temptation to despair is a powerful tactic of the Enemy. If we lose hope for our salvation, we open our minds wide to all the poisonous thoughts that the enemy seeks to plant there. If we should conclude that we have no hope of winning the battle, why even fight? So we must never take off the helmet of hope if we hope to overcome the devil” (MSW page 58).
Scripture also reminds us that God never forsakes those who turn to him and who are truly repentant:
“I give them everlasting life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28).
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword?…In all these things we overcome because of Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35-39).
“So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Cor. 5:17)
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