When I share my testimony with people, I usually begin by stating that I accepted Christ when I was 12 years old, but I didn’t start acting like it until I was 27. To say that I was hot mess as a teenager would be the understatement of the century. I was grounded more than I was free. I snuck out, stole money from my dad while he was sleeping, started drinking and smoking before I even graced the doors of my high school campus. I bounced more checks in my late teens and early twenties than I should admit on a public platform. My poor parents didn’t know what to do with me. I know they prayed for me. I know they tried to talk sense into me. I know they reached out to counselors, youth pastors, and friends for advice and support. I know, now, that they must have lost a lot of sleep worrying about me and spent a lot of money cleaning up the trail of heartbreak and disaster that l left in my self-centered adolescent wake.

My sweet daddy spent his first Christmas with Jesus this year. He passed away this October. I’m still devastated by his absence because he was my biggest fan. I look back on my childhood and my life as an adult and can’t recall a single moment in my entire life that I doubted his love for me. After his death, hundreds of people poured out their love for my dad in letters, posts, text messages, and conversations reminiscing about the love they felt from Dad and about how he made them feel special and accepted just for who they were. I’ve come to realize since losing Daddy that God gave me this earthly father as an amazing example of what unconditional love looks like. Apparently, no matter how wretched I was as a teenager, there was nothing I could do to make my daddy not love me and forgive me or want me to be reconciled unto himself. Were there consequences of my actions and choices? Absolutely. There are many struggles that I face even today as a 46-year-old that are direct results of my sinful past–burdens that I might bare until the day I meet Jesus myself; however, knowing that I was loved and forgiven by my earthly father is not one of them. For that I am forever grateful.

In Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth, he assured them of their Heavenly Father’s love for them and His desire to reconcile them unto Himself. Paul tells them in chapter 5, “15And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. 16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”

So, what is this “message of reconciliation” about which Paul speaks? As you begin this new year, know in the deepest depths of your heart that there is nothing old in your past that God will not leave behind in His endless ocean of forgiveness. There is nothing you could have ever done that will make Him not love you today. As the old passes away in the new year, seek and rest in the One who is the source of that kind of love and who only desires to love and be loved by you no matter what–our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.