The gospel message includes forgiveness as a central element, and Christ offers this forgiveness to us. It means that all our sins, both past and present, are forgiven, and that we are loved by God. This forgiveness gives us confidence and peace. We are kept going by God through Christ's work on the cross, which makes it possible for us to continue as sinners in a world that is often unpredictable, lacking in forgiveness, or even comprehension of forgiveness.Forgiveness is something that we cannot earn or achieve through our own actions. Rather, it is something that Christ earned for us when He took on the burden of sin and guilt and paid the price that was required as a result of sin. He satisfied the wrath of God for sin on our behalf, so that we could be set free from the legal obligation of punishment. Christ is our satisfaction from the moment we receive the Spirit until we are glorified. We rest in Christ for our forgiveness. Satan is the accuser, and he is always questioning sinners as to their commitment to Christ. He comes as an angel of light, using scripture, ministers, and people around us who do not understand forgiveness, to try to convince us that there is something else that we need to do in order to be forgiven.The ability to forgive is an important part of Christian life as it allows us to experience God's love more fully. When we first come to Christ, we realize that we cannot save ourselves and must rely on Christ completely to achieve forgiveness. However, some Christians reinterpret scripture in a way that prevents us from understanding forgiveness fully. This can lead to feelings of guilt and estrangement from God. He reinterprets scripture in a way that prevents us from understanding forgiveness fully, so that we always question the effectiveness of the gospel in changing our current mindset, and so that we feel estranged from our Father and burdened by guilt. This is a more widespread issue among Christians than any other area of Christian life.The deep and lasting experience of forgiveness that we felt lasting for days or weeks was Christ becoming real to us during those first hours after we were born again. However, we began to revert back into our old pattern of feeling guilty and not having the assurance we enjoyed during those first times. We thought we could go back to our old ways and still experience the same forgiveness and peace, but we were wrong. We need to continuously surrender our lives to Christ and ask for His forgiveness, or we will continue to feel the burden of our guilt and shame.After experiencing salvation for the first time, some people may start to feel guilty because they become too self-centered and think that they had something to do with being forgiven. In reality, they did not have anything to do with it. These people may start to think that maybe they could go back to living under the law, so that they would be kept from straying away from Christ.Our struggles were the result of not really understanding the full extent of God's grace and not having a deep knowledge of that grace. We needed to deepen our understanding of God through all our experiences.It was important for us to have a renewed sense of His forgiveness, and as we received that assurance and grew in our knowledge of the truth, we desired to be filled with all knowledge and prayed to be led more and more into the truth so we would have a deeper understanding.The appreciation of just how deep and wide the goodness, love, and faithfulness of God is can be a result of experiencing His forgiveness anew. In experiencing His forgiveness anew, we may be given a supernatural peace, as if He speaks peace to our hearts.Forgiveness is not just an intellectual understanding of scripture, but an experience of God's forgiveness that comes from growing in His word and focusing on His greatness. As we have spiritual fellowship with one another, we deepen our understanding and experience of forgiveness. If we want to truly understand forgiveness, we need to see it in the context of God's grace. His grace is free and unlimited, and if we have a limited view of God, we will also have a limited view of forgiveness. But if we see God as he really is – big and powerful and gracious – then we will also see forgiveness in a new light, as something that is complete.Forgiveness from God is like being embraced by a loving father. You feel His arms around you, and He is so sweet to you. He comes in a manner that pulls away the chains of sin, giving you a sense of freedom from sin. He renews you with His grace, and you are forgiven.We are so overwhelmed with His goodness that our desires are focused on praising Him and extolling Him all of our days. We habitually take pleasure in our desire for more of Him, we seek Him as a person, we long for Him in our mourning over sin, we desire Him more than anything else in life.It is essential to have desires so that we can comprehend assurance and be unwavering in our hearts, responding to what we know is true. The everlasting God who fills all things and is omnipotent and omniscient dwells in us! This is really, really true! Our desires could never be met in this life if we ever saw His absolute presence, because we would be overwhelmed by His power. Although we may feel like we are being consumed by our desires for God, in reality, it is only because we desire Him more and more that we are able to understand His power. This understanding can be disheartening at times, because it emphasizes our own lack in comparison to Him. However, we are motivated by the knowledge that there is nowhere else to turn except back to Him, and that the only way to do so is by continuing to desire Him more and more.