Messing up

What does God expect of us after we make a mistake?

I struggle with this one. Its a tough question to ask yourself; "what do I have to do to make up for what I have done?" I am going to share my experience with mistakes and how to fix them.

I believe that we are all responsible for our own sins. We are all created sinful and it is human nature to just plain screw up sometimes: no one is free from it. While we may not have the choice of being completely holy during our time on earth, we do have the choice be as close to that as possible. I believe that's what god calls us  to do, and part of accomplishing that is making up for our sins. Jesus gave us something wonderful in anticipation of such a need, the sacrament of reconciliation. This cleans us of our sins and reminds us that God will give forgiveness to anyone as long as they seek it. There is no such thing s a sin too great to be forgiven. However, it is very difficult if not impossible to go to reconciliation for all our sins. I know if I did that I could rarely leave the church. So what does God call us to do outside of the sacrament in order to show we are truly sorry? I believe we have to look to ourselves in order to find that truth.

I will now speak directly from my opinion about sin. I think God gave us all a part of our mind dedicated specifically to knowing when we have messed up, and what we need to do in order to fix it. We call it the conscience. The conscience controls our guilt. It makes us feel bad about things that we feel are wrong. When I feel guilty, I believe that it is God telling me that I have done something wrong and I need to fix it. When I do, the guilt goes away. What a wonderful system. Its almost like good implanted a sin detector or something inside of our minds. I also believe that the more we listen to our conscience, the stronger it gets and the closer we become to God. I also don't believe that pleasing a guilty conscience is all that difficult, but it requires letting go of pride. In many cases a simple apology, a brief ignorance of self, to fix an offense to most people. Other times it is to God himself we must apologize, and that is even easier: God always forgives after all.