Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
12 18 2024
Is it too late to redeem the failures or setbacks of our year?
As we approach the end of another season we pause or at least try to see where we have come and maybe where we are going. We live in a world of calendars and clocks; time waits for no man; there is no going back. What was once spent is gone… time is lost forever without regard to mistakes or misteps, but then we must ask: if we can pause just long enough to consider, is that true if God is truly Sovereign? I think it’s hard to see forward at times when we are shackled by what we believe without searching for the truth of what God says and what God sees. We argue…Look, I can see this loss…this broken relationship, this whatever before my eyes; why do I need to confirm the loss with God?
I am just sick to my stomach every time I think of it.
Honesty, my family has had the hardest year of the 26 years of our marriage. My marriage has been a rock of support and love, but financially, emotionally, and medically, the 8 different surgeries between us have tested us to the core. Even now two of us are still in Rehab with another possible surgery to go. What I write about today…God is helping me to see what he sees and what I desperately need to believe. I pray it helps you or someone you know.
Why are we so independent and stubborn in our thinking in the natural? And can we even break through to see what is supernatural in a heavenly dimension? No, we see it for what our natural senses tell us, and I will just have to get over it. But God tells us unequivocally, in so many areas in the scriptures, that there is Nothing He is not able to renew or restore. Hebrews 6: 4-6 But we too often choose to live in the confinements of our beliefs, our pain, our hurts, and just accept them for what they are. There is no redemption in my past, except time heals all wounds. Our past is fixed, whatever happened to us…by us… what’s done is done, and there is no undoing them.
Again I say, But God…I just love those two pronouncements…But God, Does God indeed hold our past, present, and future in His hands? We know that is so, but we do not speak like or act like it is! In God, our past is not closed; he holds all time in his hands. He has a history of restoring what the locusts have destroyed; he renews people and changes what were cataclysmic events. Why, because he is not limited by our perception of the irredeemable. Boy, am I glad about that. A broken vase may be shattered, and so we attempt to glue it back, but it will never be the same. But God, renews it and restores it. He can even rearrange the DNA of something to give it a new birth. It’s called transformed, and the cracks become areas of light for his loving, redemptive power to shine through, and it becomes something to honor him in its beauty and its new purpose. Isn’t that exactly the same with us? Broken is not Broken forever. A vase, a child, an adult, a relationship, it is within him to remake and renew each of them for his glory and our good.
Job losses were profoundly unimaginable. Job 1: 13 22 But God, restored Job beyond what he had been. It wasn’t compensation but transformation and an abundant blessing.
Locusts devour indiscriminately; There is nothing left…complete devastation. Again, But God, promises that even this can be restored. Nothing is too far gone, the lost years that have wrecked us and destroyed people, but nothing is beyond his reach, past, present, or future. He does not just restore but does so with beauty beyond what was. We all carry the weight of lost years and lost seasons. Maybe they were your rebellious years, or suffering that consumed our joy, or just a slow erosion of our dreams and, like sheep eating their way into another pasture, lose their way. Whatever the nature, his promise to restore is forever with us. Relationships, in our view, irreparably broken can be made new and the joy restored. He brings renewal and hope to broken promises, betrayal and lost dreams, even abandonment and abuse. Not because we deserve it but because it is his nature to make what is lost and make it found. Restoration doesn’t mean it returns to the way things were, but perhaps in a better direction. A job lost to a new calling; a dream deferred may give way to a better way.
Waiting: It is one of the hardest things we do or don’t do well. These promises of which we speak seem far off, as we see the broken pieces of our lives still in our wake. Is 40:31 says, “But God turns all things for our good when we serve him”… when we surrender to him our thoughts, our prejudices, our preconceived ideas. In the waiting, our lives are tested and refined, and we are strengthened… trusting in God’s love takes time, and we accept more of Him and let go of more of us. But His promises never change…but to restore requires our patience, humility, and trust in His ways that are clearly above ours. How hard is it for any of us to surrender our timeline to him? His plans have a blessing timeline, even when they do not mesh with ours.
But we must also be moving forward to position ourselves to receive what God has for us…
We have to surrender the hurt, the pain, and or unforgiveness, of even ourselves, to receive the restoration of God. It begins with repentance of our actions and conceptions that may have contributed a part in the loss. That simply means we humble ourselves and change the thinking and the words that follow and entrap us. With an open heart, we ask God. That requires obedience, and above all, it is a partnership and requires our participation. It is not something we earn or are owed because of human merit. Jesus gives that freely in His love for us, which is the heart of the gospel. He takes what is broken by sin and restores it by the price he paid on Calvary. Think about it, If God can restore our relationship with him, he can restore anything. Let us fix our eyes on Him, who holds all things together. Col 1:17 No dream is too broken… no time is too lost. It can still become a masterpiece. We long to right ourselves, but that is at God’s mercy. Broken dreams are not the end but can be a doorway to pathways
beyond what we could imagine. But God. But God.
This is the paradox of God, isn’t it? 2 Cor 5:17 What looked like devastation can be the beginning of something new and amazing. A better beginning. It is natural to grieve our lost visions of health, purpose, and joy, but as we sit among its pieces, we must remember God is never surprised. We must come out of the rubble and look up to where our hope comes from
What we see as failure or loss, he does not mourn in the distance. But God, can take the very fragment that is worthless in our site and make from it something new and better than what was originally imagined. Eph 3:10 Something eternal. But when we surrender our timeline of dissatisfaction, discontent, or even our despair that it will ever change, He can begin His work. It will begin with the peace he gives that surpasses understanding. It begins with a calm faith; “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” He is with me every step of the way. Gal 6:9 We can glory in his ultimate care that whatever the matter is, we are not alone, and He is more than able. 1 Cor 10:13 Isn’t that where the Joy is? Neh 1:10 The Joy of the Lord is my strength. When I can surrender to him what I have no earthly control over and trust His sovereignty…I find the pathway to not only His peace but the joy that will give me the strength to walk another day. One day at a time.
Lynda Randle – One Day At a Time