The Unexpected Ways of God: Mistakes

What do our past mistakes and failures have to do with God’s plan?

I have a friend who always thought he wanted to be an English teacher. But when the 2008 recession hit, he was just finishing his education degree and suddenly there were no open High School English teacher positions.

It was a very frustrating time for my friend. He applied for any opportunity that came along, but nothing panned out. And through all of this I would support my friend and encouraged him and talked with him about other possibilities that he might pursue. And over time my friend would ask me about my job as a pastor and one day he admitted that he had thought in the past about maybe being a pastor someday. And so then I started to push him a little in that direction. And after some subtle pushing and then some not so subtle pushing, my friend went to seminary. And he’s serving as the pastoral leader of a church right now.

But here’s the really incredible part. The church where my friend is serving, it shares a parking lot with the local library. My friend who failed at being an English teacher is now serving the mission of God in a location that shares space with the library.

So often, this is how God works.

Think of all the stories you’ve heard on the news or in magazines or books about the atheist who goes on to become a pastor. Or the convicted felon who goes on to start a prison ministry. Or the homeless person who turns their life around and now runs a homeless shelter. God doesn’t call the equipped, God equips the called and in that equipping God takes your past and shakes it and flips it around and repurposes it for God’s purpose.

There’s a word for this, it’s called Redemption and it’s what God is all about. We can get so focused on the current chapter of our story but we must always remember that God has a Long-Term Plan. And that Long-Term Plan includes the redemption of all humankind. All of humanity, all of this broken messed up world will be redeemed by the power of God in Christ Jesus. That’s the Gospel promise. That’s what the Bible is all about-- it’s about God’s long-term plan to take our failures and repurpose them for the Mission of God. Your sin, your mistakes, your failures are not going to be brushed to the side and ignored. No, God’s even better than that-- God’s going to redeem those failures, God’s going to redeem that sin within you! God’s going to take those mistakes and missed opportunities and turn them into something beautiful!