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.
–J. I. Packer
Plenty of times I’ve missed the road.
Plenty of times I’ve had to “watch the car” sink into the bog.
I’m so glad that such terrible mistakes, though impossible for me to fix, were still redeemable by God.
He can and does and has and will again take my biggest mistakes and allow them to help me better understand Him, His love, and His redemption.
I may still have to suffer through consequences of my mistakes, but He will walk with me as I go through them, and on the other side I will be able to testify to His goodness and the new path and plan He has placed me on.