Dear Bruce,
I am a mess of a person. I have made many bad choices in my life and have lots of pain in my life to show for it. Because I have lived a life choosing my plan before God’s plan, I am not even sure God still has a plan for me. Is there a future worth looking forward to for someone like me? Or do I just have to accept I will live the rest of my life, because of my poor choices, in a state of mediocrity at best?
John
John,
Heartfelt questions, ones which I think all of us can closely identify with. Let me, from the start, make you keenly aware that the Gospel, the message of Jesus’ teaching, is for people like you, me and the rest. Biblically speaking, and as a practically observable reality, we have all made poor choices in our lives. Even some of the heroes of faith we often look to for inspiration have made royally poor choices. Moses-murderer. David-murderer and adulterer. Paul-murderer of Christians. The list could go on…one liar, thief, trickster, moral failure after another. That is not to say that some don’t obviously choose to live in a pattern of persistent failure. Many do, sadly. The Gospel message and the message of Jesus’ life and teaching, however, are all about bringing mercy and grace to those who have seen themselves bring pain into their lives.
Last week, on my radio show “Think Out Loud” (wgso.com) I addressed this reality as we discussed various scandals in the political arena and in public life in general. As humans, we are prone to make a mess of things. Adultery, greed, lust, violence, thievery, falsehood, anger, and so many more ills infect us. When we come to a place where we are willing to admit to ourselves, to God, and to others that we are in need of mercy and renewal, that is where the road to healing begins. Paul, who was transformed from a killer of Christians to a hero of the Church is famous for his cries to God to help him deal with the allure of sin which caused him to do all those things he wished not to do. Too often, Paul commented, he was prone to do the bad he did not want to do, and found himself too often unable to do the good which he longed to do. We are all in the same place.
The good news, it would appear, is that you have finally come to a place where you recognize that your choices are not merely choices. You seem to have admitted to yourself and perhaps to God that your missteps have been moral failings, breeches of God’s best for you. In coming to that place, and in openly acknowledging that you have failed to live up to God’s agenda for you, you can ask for and expect His mercy. He is about mercy.
My encouragement to you at this point in your life would be to take stock of the condition of your heart, ask God and others for forgiveness and healing where you have failed Him and others, and begin to make a grace-filled, concerted effort to allow God to show you where He desires to lead you for the duration of the journey. Ask Him for His help where you know you are prone to weakness, and allow Him to use your strengths to further His work in you and others.
In relationships, work, play, and in the fabric of our thought-life, hopes, and dreams, God desires to offer His good and best purposes for us. Abandon the thirst for putting Him off and open yourself to making His Plan A your Plan A. So many have brought untold difficulty into their lives as a result of expecting God to bless their agenda. Your “Plan B” can never match the good God offers in His plans, and He is not about blessing our misguided attempts to live life in a way that contradicts who He is and what He is about. Though many try, and try hard time after time, our Plan B will never bring us the fulfillment we are looking for.
Take heart. You will never be good enough to earn your way to God. You will never climb a moral ladder high enough to please Him. Its not about that. Its about a trusting relationship with the lover of your soul. You have failed and will fail again. In those times in which you do just that in the future, run back to the compelling, tangible, vivid, artistic, and life-giving demonstration of God’s love which is the cross of Christ. And, rather than making the cross into something of your own design (like so many in our culture are prone to do, abusing the image of the cross and turning it into a formula for financial success or an impotent bejeweled ornament of comfort and even sexuality for some) fall upon that image of mercy and grace and power. In the mess of our lives we all find the healing, perspective, and future we hunger for at the foot of the cross, the beautiful cross.
Find yourself in Him,
Bruce Smith
optimuslife.org