Maybe you feel that you screwed up your life and God is saying to you “I’m done with them.” Maybe you heard that because you took that job God didn’t lead you to that he’s somehow finished with you because you didn’t ask first. It could be that you felt a nudge in the past to take a certain career path and you basically told God no. It could be that you willfully stepped into a life of sin and you knew it was wrong but you are still living there. Maybe it’s just a decision you felt God telling you to make, and you knew, you still know that he wants you to do it but you haven’t done it.
No matter which one of the cases you find yourself in above, you are wondering if you went to far, if you messed up so much that you removed yourself from God’s will. I know what it feels like to feel this way… you are wondering if you are doing the right thing.
Abraham and Sarah’s Story
Abraham and Sarah had a promise from God that they would have a child. Well, they were growing old and time was passing by and they saw no way for this promise to come to pass in the natural. After they got tired of waiting, the decided to take matters into their own hands. This is what Sarah said to Abraham:
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” (Genesis 16:1-2)
Abraham, as faithful as he was didn’t even have to pray about this 🙂 he took Hagar and slept with her and they had a child. God clearly did not tell them to do this but they did it anyway all because they grew impatient. They sinned.
Many today would certainly call this stepping out of God’s will. They knew they were not supposed to do this with Hagar but they didn’t care in the moment. Do you think God abandoned Abraham and Sarah because they didn’t listen to him? Did God take away his promise from them because they walked away from it?
Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. 2 Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. 3 Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. (Genesis 21:1-3)
Even though Abraham and Sarah made their own promise child with Hagar, God still provided a child just as he promised. God never turned his back on them. He made them a promise and he kept it. If he did it for them, why wouldn’t he do it for you?
I want to let you in on a fact about getting yourself out of God’s will:
You are not powerful enough to remove yourself from God’s will for your life. You are simply not that good.
If God wants you to do something, have something or go somewhere I promise you, you’ll eventually go whether you decide to at first or not. There’s nothing you could do where God would say “I am forever finished with them.” You may feel that’s exactly what God has said because of your choices but remember how God kept his promise to Abraham and Sarah? This is a promise he’s promised you already:
he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. (Psalm 103:10)
There is grace for you my friend. God is not holding your mistakes or your doubts against you. God is not putting you through “hell” or causing terrible things to happen to you to repay you for not following him.
God is not like that, he’s not holding a grudge and he’s not “out to get you” but God is a grace-giver. God loves you and he sees you. It’s never too late to take a step towards him. He’s always one step away.
Reflect:
Here’s the key for knowing if you’re doing what God wants you to do: Humbly submit to God and let him work and speak, I promise you he’ll provide for you even in your Egypt (your sin, your mistakes and your doubt.) He’ll step in there with you and take you by the hand eventually leading you to freedom.
It’s not too late, you didn’t somehow “miss” God’s plan for you. When you get quiet and let him speak, he’ll nudge you in a direction and it will be scary I know this from experience, but I promise you, when you take that step he’ll take care of you.
There’s a song I love called “As you find me” by Hillsong United and it talks about how we cannot run far enough for God to not welcome us back home. In the end it talks about how eventually, God will show grace and we’ll say that he’s our “every good thing” all because “his love is too good to leave us where we are.”
- What can you do to today to take a step toward God?
Bryant Westbrook 