The promises of God are yes and amen (2 Cor. 1:20). Our whole eternity is based on His promises. But the problem with trusting and believing, I think, is because we have been lied to by man or woman, so that we have problems believing promises; man and woman will make a promise to you, looking you straight in the face, give you their word and then don’t follow through! Their word doesn’t mean anything, and when enough people do it to us, we develop a distrust factor within us about everybody, including God, unconsciously.
But then God builds a resume with His children; as we walk this walk of faith day by day, month by month, year by year, things happen; trials come, problems arise, sickness occurs, financial problems plague us, enemies rise, the devil is allowed to roam the earth seeking whom he may destroy, and we pray, seek the face of God for help, and we see God answer prayer, give us breakthroughs, heal our bodies, work things out for us, our children and families, and it builds our trust. For we learn that in God, there are no faults or failures; we learn that God keeps His promises.
But for those who miss the mark and you are down on yourself, you need to understand that God, who began a work in you, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6) … we are God’s masterpiece, He’s working on us, shaping us; He has begun a work in us when He saved us; and what we are going through now in our walk, failures, mess-ups, faults and everything else is a part of that process. In His foreknowledge, He knew what we would do before we did it.
I beg us this morning to not judge our whole journey where we are now, in this moment, in the middle; don’t get discouraged if you are not where you think you ought to be; just know that God is not through with you yet! If God was through with you, you would be a finished product; and finished products go home to be with the Lord; He’s not through with you … that’s what He tells Jacob (Gen. 28:15); see, Jacob probably thought that his life was over as he knew it; this man had made a big mess that only God could clean up; he is on the run for his life from his brother Esau; having deceived him and stolen his birthright blessing, his brother, in anger, vows to kill Jacob; his mother was a co-conspirator, an accomplice to his sin, and it tore the family up.
That’s what happens when a parent shows favoritism to one child over the other; parents, whatever you do, don’t do this, especially when it is obvious to the other children; it drives a wedge between the children (James 4:13–17).
Perhaps, he thought his life would never be the same; not knowing the future, his family torn apart, can’t see his parents and a brother that hated him and vowed to kill him.
Community, we can make a mess of our lives real quick; a mess that even Mr. Clean can’t clean up! One bad mistake can haunt us for the rest of our lives; marriages have been broken up and the children in the marriage suffer emotional damage as a result of either the mother’s or father’s infidelity; Eve, the mother of all women, brought untold pain to all women in childbirth as a result of her one act of disobedience (Gen. 3:16).
Many a human being is saying “woe is me” as a result of one bad mistake; the next time we visit a cemetery, only God knows how many are out there that could have still been here but made the mistake of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, engaged in something they had no business doing.
When folk listen to the devil, it always leads to destruction; and remember that “whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap (Gal. 6:7).” But that’s why it’s good to serve the Lord and walk in step with Him; it gives you a fruitful life, and it keeps you out of trouble. On the run, he takes a stone and makes it a pillar, goes to sleep and he dreams. He sees a ladder reaching from earth to heaven and angels going up and down on it. And the Lord stood at the top of the ladder and made him promise to bless him (Gen. 28:10–15).
Even now, while on the run, God was not through with him yet! He was not disqualified from God’s plan for his life; and neither are we; don’t let the devil make you think that just because you made a mistake, got off on the wrong track, made some bad decisions, that you are disqualified from the blessings of God; if only perfect people could be blessed, we all would be disqualified! All we have to do is “confess or admit that we have sinned, God is faithful to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).”
See, what Jacob didn’t know was that he was already in line to be blessed! God just had to bring him to a place of surrender; he had to go through to get to; and so, do we! We have not been thrown on the trash dump because we made a mistake; we are still in line to be blessed! God is not through with us yet.