The Cookie Jar Theory

I have always had a hard time with the idea of God forgiving all of our 'sins'. Especially with the 'sins' we repeat time and time again. I have asked people of faith many times about what I call my Cookie Jar Theory and they have answered but their answers never made enough sense to me to be able to let go of my question, how can God really forgive us our 'sins'. I believed I have recently come to that answer within myself.

My Cookie Jar Theory is simple: The Cookie Jar is filled with cookies and your Mom tells you not to have any. Although you cannot seem to resist the desire to have a cookie. You apologize afterwards and you are forgiven. If you keep on taking a cookie and you keep on asking for forgiveness eventually your Mom is not going to believe you are truly sorry, because you keep on producing the same type of behavior, you can't really be sorry. My question comes from this idea: If I say I'm sorry but I cannot seem to stop my improper behavior then eventually I will no longer be forgive, so how can God truly love and forgive me?

Like I said this is a question I have asked time and time again and I have never gotten an answer I felt happy with, until now. I just realized today today that God does forgive every time we do anything, the ones who don't forgive is ourselves. Because we, some of us, believe ourselves to be unworthy of forgiveness we do not allow it into our lives. We can ask forgiveness until the cows come home but if we are unable to allow forgiveness in we will never truly find it.

The Cookie Jar theory is simple, God will always forgive us. God knows us beyond what we know of ourselves. I believe God sees the struggle we go through within ourselves, in God knowing and seeing our inward struggle God sees that we truly are sorry, even if we are unable at the time to change our behavior. I also believe God never denies us forgiveness, we deny ourselves. I don't believe God looks at our lives and expects us to ask for forgiveness. This is a journey, it's an experience, we each are going to run it to many different situations, good and bad and we are here to experience what this life has to offer.

I believe God is our creator, our Father in Heaven and that all God wants from us is to live this life with the understanding that we are connected. We are connected to God and to everyone else by God. I believe once we understand that and the fact that no matter what we do we will go back to God in the end, then we will start to be kinder to ourselves. I believe this life is not a test or a lesson, this is an experience. A wonderful opportunity to create a life in the way we want to. An opportunity to be free and know, if we can grasp the knowing, that we are always safe, always protected and always loved by God. God did not abandon us on this Earth, God created this Earth for us. We are connected and attached. We are meant to be and show the love of God through ourselves and we can only truly do that when we learn to love ourselves as God loves us completely and wholly without and judgement or persecution.

I encourage you all to consider this idea.

In Loving Inspiration,

Micah