There are some awesome men, both in Biblical record, and even today in our own country, who have inspired us all as Christ followers, by walking faithfully with the Lord, leaving us both a great challenge and a hope that we too can walk with God and live a life of faithfulness to Him. We need stories like theirs, especially in those moments when we are wrestling with challenging circumstances and seasons of pain and hardship.

This blog post is not intended to take a single piece away from that. But the reality is that many of us, inspite of the encouraging testimony of these great men of God, have failed. We have not responded as one would expect a man who follows Jesus and seeks after God, should respond. Instead, quite the opposite. We have failed miserably. We have screwed it up, missed the mark, fallen short, and made a complete mess of things.

Once that has been our response, there is no going back. We can not undo what has been done, take back what was said, or do what we failed to do.

Most of you know the story of Job. A man who suffered quite possibly more than any other man who ever lived. Yet through this horrific loss and suffering, Job remains faithful. With seemingly unshakable resolve, he continues to trust God….

Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him…….. Job 13:15 NKJV….. WHAT A DECLARATION OF JOBS FAITH IN GOD…..A DECLARATION OF WAR ON THE ENEMY WHO WOULD LIMIT OR DESTROY THAT FAITH!

Some of us have had that opportunity to stand fast in the faith, and declare to all the world around us… I trust in God, no matter what……and that moment slipped through our fingers. Maybe we were lacking in Spiritual maturity. Maybe we were focused on the pain, such that we could not see the healer. Maybe we simply just screwed it up. The situations and circumstances are nearly as diverse as the events themselves. To loose a child to disease, accident, or suicide or to fall into such financial ruin as to loose everything. To become ill with a long tedious life ending disease…the list of suffering goes on and on…and I will be the first to tell you…” my name is not Job”

We have become angry, unforgiving, depressed and defeated, negative with endless grieving, lost, undone, broken, and in our perception of ourselves worthless, unusable, discarded, unlovable, unforgivable.

Where do you go from this place of dispare, you have no strength left. There is no more courage or even hope. So what do you do? To whom can you turn? The shame and guilt weigh you down like a millstone around your neck and you see yourself beyond help, outside of the will of God….and somehow out of the reach of his love, forgivness and grace. Our upbringing may preach to us about the sinfulness of SIN, that God hates SIN and judgement is moments away. We deserve to be punished. God would be JUST to destroy us, or put us on ” the shelf “. What an ominous sound….you’ve been placed on the shelf…

We spend weeks, months, years, even decades adrift on this shelf, because according to our perception and deffinition of our situation, we have failed the test, we have stumbled, and fallen, and there is no getting back up, in one moment our SIN, poor choices, or bad decision has ruined everything.

The problem with all of this is It is simply NOT TRUE.

There is no such place as outside of God’s Grace and forgiveness…Paul said…where SIN abounds, grace does much more abound. God’s love for you is said in the Word, to be unmeasurable…the hight, breadth, width, and length, that is a three dimensional measurement of God’s love, is not possible because His love is unfailing, never ending.

WHAT about God’s judgement for SIN you may say….will I not reap what I have sown? Is God not bound by His Justice and Holiness to judge sin?

Except when Gods grace interviens we will always reap what we have sown. You cannot plant apple seeds and then come back in harvest and expect to pick bananas. If you smoke 2 packs of cigarettes a day for 20 yrs. There is a good chance you will one day contract lunge cancer. Because if we sow, we reap from that seed. If you are permisqeous, and have unprotected sex with multiple partners, you have a much higher risk of contracting an STD. It is a natural law.

As far as having sinned against God’s Holiness and justice, and the impending judgement and destruction….

We are fearful, we run and hide from God, or just give up on hope, and wait for the lightning to fall….I mean after all, look at Israel… constantly and repeatedly throughout the old Testament Israel finds themselves being judged for forsaking God…repents…is restored… and forsake God again…and over, and over, and over. What we take away from all of that, and what most of us have been taught, is that when you SIN God will judge you and punishment is coming.

Reality of it is God has already judged ALL SIN on the cross, as Jesus became SIN for us, who knew no SIN, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

God’s wrath was vented on Calvary, SIN was judged, and by faith in Jesus Christ, you have been set free of all the wrath, judgement, and condemnation that use to bind us because of our SIN.

SIN has been judged. God’s Holiness and justice satisfied. So instead of suffering God’s wrath and judgement for SIN, in CHRIST, we are Holy and without blame before Him in love. For the believer, instead of wrath and punishment for SIN, there is chastising out of His love for us. HEBREWS 12.

The natural law of sowing and reaping is still in effect, but we now have the promise that all things work together for our good, if we love Him, so that even when we mess it up, if we love God and take that to Him, he will change it from a negative to a positive, and use that very thing to help mold us into the image of his son.

The lesson in all of this is DO NOT GIVE UP…GOD LOVES YOU AND IS NOT FINISHED WITH YOU, JUST COME TO HIM.

SOME OF US HAVE BEEN THROUGH HORRIFIC SITUATIONS AND CIRCUMSTANCES. No one would fault us for folding up, and giving up, and retreating into ourselves to hide out from God and the world. We didn’t respond well and were ashamed. We are hiding from God’s wrath. We are BELIEVING a lie…..

If we confess our SIN He is faithful, and just to forgive us of our SIN, and to cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness.

Be a man after God’s own heart, and bring everything to Him and trust Him with it…give Him your whole heart…be a man like David.