We’ve all done it…
Taken that wrong turn…
And some people have found that wrong turn to be a costly mistake…
Sometimes we feel as if we taken the wrong turn not just with our car, but with our entire life. We look back on the past and and we think, “Boy, did I choose the wrong way.” And we might even wonder if life has been permanently damaged because of that choice. If you feel that way, I have great news for you…
If I found I had driven into a bog, I should know I had missed the road. But this knowledge would not be of much comfort if I then had to stand helpless watching the car sink and vanish; the damage would be done, and that would be that. Is it the same when a Christian wakes up to the fact that he has missed God’s guidance and taken the wrong way? Is the damage irrevocable? Must he now be put off course for life?
Thank God, no. Our God is a God who not merely restores, but takes up our mistakes and follies into His plan for us and brings good out of them.
This is part of the wonder of His gracious sovereignty…. The Jesus who restored Peter after his denial and corrected his course more than once after that, is our Savior today and He has not changed….
Guidance, like all God’s acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us His way, that we may tread it; He wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God’s promise; this is how good He is.
Thus it appears that the right context for discussing guidance is one of confidence in the God who will not let us ruin our souls.
Our concern, therefore, in this discussion should be more for His glory than for our security — for that is already taken care of.
Isn’t that a beautiful description of how good God is to us. That if we have chosen Jesus as Savior and Lord, then no matter if we slip, we know that His arms are beneath us and that we will not ruin our souls. Our security in Him has been established already, so let us live for His glory!
(Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)