cause for a celebration

Tuesday March 12^th, 2 Corinthians 5: 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  Walking with Christ is walking in the light of possibilities and hope in this world.  A new creation means we will do our best to discover what God has in the plans in this life for us.  Sometime we fall, all of us some of the time and some of us all of the time.  We fall into that first of all temptations, the desire to be like god.  We all succumb to the temptation to take a big bite of the fruit of knowledge and power and the desire to be like god, and walk our own way thank you very much.  After a while, most of us find the same thing Adam and Eve found, we find only shame.  There is what William Bradshaw calls healthy shame that pushes us back to what we should have be doing in the first place, and there is toxic shame that simply tells us that we are a bad person (Healing the Shame that Binds You).  For the toxic shame, Christ offers forgiveness and a welcome to New Life.  For the healthy shame, forgiveness is already known by the person receiving it, as is the New Life in Christ which is part of everyday life.  Either way, it is cause for a celebration.