I found this on Facebook: If you think you’ve blown
God’s plan for your life, rest in this: you are not that powerful.
That statement can only be appreciated when we grasp the
magnitude of God’s sovereignty. God’s right and ability to accomplish His will
without anything or anyone able to stop what He wants done.
We might challenge His rule, doubt His authority, even
oppose His will, but in the end, God will do what God will do. He will
work through natural events or step in to transform circumstances. He will
override our mistakes, and even allow unjust things done to us to complete His
plan. As Sovereign, He has no limitations and no competition.
Contrary to that, however, our life experience has been,
whenever you mess up, you must be punished and lose your privilege. Make a
mistake in football and they throw a flag at you. Make a mistake driving and
you get pulled over. Make a mistake in a recipe and nobody eats your dessert.
Mistakes have caused us to lose a job or a relationship or
money or a vehicle or a position. Some mistakes have made us give up and then paralyzed
us to not want to try any more. Other mistakes have taken us out of the circle of
good expectations and set us aside, feeling we deserve whatever we don’t get.
We’ve made mistakes consciously. At other times, innocently,
thinking we were doing right thing, but it wasn’t. Occasionally, we had no idea
what was going on. But even without control over the outcome, the burden of
those mistakes has stayed with us and now exercises some measure of control over
our lives.
For some of us, the circumstances of our birth or events
that happened to us along the way have misshaped us and created a self-image we
are ashamed of. Or produced thoughts and feelings we had to work through.
I grew up my whole life being told by my brother I was
adopted. That’ll leave you a bit unsure of who you are. It was only resolved ten
years ago when I got a copy of my birth certificate to get a passport. Turns
out I wasn’t adopted after all.
Well, what if you are God working out a lineage to produce
the Savior of the World? You’ve chosen a family through which you’ll run that
lineage, starting it all the way back with Adam and Eve and ending up at Mary
and Joseph. You’ve determined to reveal the plan of that promise to Abraham, make
it specific to Isaac and then carry it on to Jacob and within Jacob’s family of
twelve sons through one specific son—Judah.
And everything was going according to plan until Judah’s
sons wouldn’t cooperate. What now?
Gen 38:11-30
Matt 1:1-6 The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David,
the son of Abraham: Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of
Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah was the father of Perez
and Zerah by Tamar, Perez was the father of Hezron, and Hezron the
father of Ram. Ram was the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
and Nahshon the father of Salmon. Salmon was the father of Boaz by
Rahab, Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of
Jesse. Jesse was the father of David the king.
Now, if we think God doesn’t use damaged people for
something so holy, we probably also have mental categories of who is
usable and who isn’t. We break them down by good, bad and ugly. Or a Santa list
of who’s naughty and who’s nice. Who gets the blessing and who gets the
stocking of coal?
How would we characterize people usable by God?
- Really good people. Nice people.
- Holy people, religious people, happy people.
- People who haven’t done bad things or said bad things.
- People who only think spiritual thoughts.
- People who pray 40 hours a day.
- People who keep the 10 Commandments.
In Jesus’ day they’d say: your righteousness must be on the
level of the Pharisees to be acceptable to God. Or we’d say: God only uses the
people in the top 10% of His list of choicest children.
Then you run into the Tamar and Judah story. And we say,
that just isn’t right. God would never use something as non-sanitized as that.
That can’t even be mentioned in polite circles. It shouldn’t even be in the
Bible, yet, there it is.
God had brought Tamar into the family to produce the link in
the chain through her. Knowing Judah’s original sons were evil, He produced a new
son between Judah and Tamar. Though we’d judge her as unacceptable because of what
she did, God used her to keep the promise alive.
Even Judah couldn’t blow God’s plan for his life as a
conduit for the ultimate presentation of the Messiah to the world. He just
wasn’t that powerful.
Job told us: I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be
thwarted. Job 42:2
God works from eternity. He pre-determines the beginning and
the end, then extend His plans throughout the ages. He isn’t making things up
as the story moves along. He doesn’t wring His hands asking: What am I going to
do to get this plan back on track?
No, God plans from the beginning to orchestrate what looks
like a mistake into an essential part of the plan to produce the results He
wants.
Tamar was in the plan from the beginning. She was
Plan A. Even though Perez would technically be an illegitimate child born out
of wedlock, he would be essential to carrying on the vision God had to deliver
the Messiah to the world. God was using a situation and a child we would deem
unusable.
Well, what does that say about us? Do we think we have
something in our past, carried within our baggage that would forbid us from anticipating
God’s best in our lives? Do we think we are unusable for God’s purposes and His
blessings because of some mistake?
Remember: If you think you’ve blown God’s plan for
your life, rest in this: you are not that powerful.
Eph
2:1-10 And
you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked
according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of
the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of
disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our
flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature
children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because
of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our
transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been
saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly
places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the
surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For
by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is
the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that
no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for
good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
That doesn’t sound like a God who wants to treat us
according to the label of our past but by the seal stating who we are in the
present.
Rom
8:33 Who will
bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is
the one who condemns? Satan? We’re taking Satan’s word over
God’s?
If the actions of Tamar and Judah, which created Perez and
continued the legacy on to Jesus, didn’t mess up God’s plan, how do we think
anything in our lives as Children of God can stop God from accomplishing what
concerns us?
Remember: If
you think you’ve blown God’s plan for your life, rest in this: you are not that
powerful.
God often uses “disequilibrium” to teach us valuable lessons.
Disequilibrium happens when something comes into our life we are unable to
handle or process. It unbalances us. God uses disequilibrium to get our
attention by shaking us out of our comfort zone. It produces a challenge that
can only be responded to by faith. I don’t understand this, but I believe God
is at work.
We prefer unruffled lives, for God to make our lives
smoother. But often God will take us through disturbing things that teach us
how He can work through ugliness to make things beautiful. God is the One who
makes beauty from ashes and gives us a garland instead of mourning.
Broken,
abused, mistreated, misused,
Her
life shattered and battered and bruised.
Now
on her own, she was empty, alone.
Without
hope and her future unknown.
Then
a voice called her name, said, “My child I lay claim
To
the brokenness you carry inside.
The
pieces you hide, the tears you’ve cried,
Work
together for the good I’ve designed.”
Whatever you hang onto as the reason you feel unworthy of
God’s best… If you think you’ve blown God’s plan for your life, rest in
this: you are not that powerful.
TAKEAWAYS:
- There is great peace that comes over us when we finally discover God is God and we aren’t.
- When it comes to God accomplishing what concerns us, His opinion is far more important than ours.
- When God is at work, He isn’t limited to only what we hand Him to work with, He is master of taking broken pieces and making from it something beautiful.
- You are the masterpiece of a God that will do what God will do.
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