Many well-meaning Christians run around through life worried about “messing up” and live under the delusion: “If I mess up, God will be done with me.” That’s a lie. Because God already knows you’re going to mess up and He already has a plan for when you do! Look at what He told Israel before they even got into the Promised Land:
And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath driven thee, (Deuteronomy 30:1)
God Already Knows You’ll Fall. He has a Plan to Pick You up Again!
When God said “when all these things are come upon thee,” what was He anticipating? He was anticipating that after Israel had partaken of the blessings, it wouldn’t be long before they would turn from the God of their blessings. (Sounds a lot like us.)
Praise God He did not end His statement there. In verses 2 and 3 of that same passage, God promised that if Israel would “return unto the LORD…obey His voice” that He would “turn [their] captivity, and have compassion upon [them].” Why did He say that? Because God said that if Israel sinned against Him in the Promised Land, the consequence would be that they would be driven from it. In a way, that symbolizes what happens without our relationship to God when we turn away from Him. Once a child of God, always a child of God but you can be a child in fellowship with His blessings, or our of fellowship without them.
It Doesn’t Matter Where You’ve Been as Long as You Come Back
What is even more amazing is that if Israel repented, it wouldn’t matter how far away they were from the Promised Land, God would seek them out and bring them back:
Deuteronomy 40:4-5
(4) If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee:
(5)And the LORD thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers. (Deuteronomy 30:5)
That also symbolizes our relationship to God. It doesn’t matter how far away you have gone, if you’ll repent and come back, God will bring you in! Repentance is the key. God will always accept you back; He will never accept your sin.
Staying Away is the Worst Thing You Can Do!
The worst thing you and I can do when we sin is to stay away from God or to try to “clean up our act” by ourselves. There was a young married couple who tried that once. They had a great home in a perfect neighborhood. Then they messed bad. They ruined everything – and not just their own lives, but the lives of their offspring – and they tried to cover up their mess. But God already knew they had failed and already had a plan in place. That young couple? Adam and Eve. The plan God had in place – already? The Lord Jesus Christ. (See Genesis 3:15) He has that same plan for you and me. It’s the only plan God has because it’s the only plan that works. God has no Plan B and we shouldn’t waste our time coming up with one when God already has a plan.
[Photo by Sergey Zolkin on Unsplash
Grace in Waves 