Another Chance
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Is there another chance for the person who has made an undeniable mistake in his life, whose future has been torpedoed by one or more fateful acts? For the person who has stepped outside of his marriage...the trusted employee who has mishandled corporate funds...the woman who has borne an illegitimate child...the young man who has rejected his early faith and turned instead to drugs or alcohol...the person who has betrayed his family, his friends...?

Divine mercy reaches as well to the person who has not committed an overt act of wrong, but has rather made a bad decision. It made sense enough at the time of choosing, but with hindsight, it turns out to have been tragic. The person who left a job when he should have stayed...or stayed when he should have left...or married the wrong person in a moment of haste...or quit school too soon, thereby limiting future advancement...or got into hopeless debt...or sent his child to the wrong school, triggering a barrage of negative effects...or started a business that flopped.

Does God hold on to such children? When their dreams have been smashed, when self-confidence has fled, when the future goes blank, when even fellow christians shake their heads and look the other way-is the Father's patience exhausted, too?

I believe in the God of the second chance.
I believe in the God who is not put off by our fiascos.
I believe in the God who has an uncanny ability to bring good out of disaster.
I believe in the God who puts Humpty Dumpties back together again. He is the God, in fact, whose "mercy endureth forever."
How many times have we recited those words without absorbing their meaning. His mercy has no cutoff. It goes on...and on...and on....

Let Him speak for Himself:

"I will restore you to health and heal your wounds," declares the Lord, "because you are called an outcast, Zion for whom no one cares." Jeremaiah 30:17. Also read Isaiah 57: 15-16,18.

David, who made more than one spectacular error and was still hailed in the N.T. as a man who "served God's purpose in his own generation" (Acts 13:36), gives us some touching glimpses of the God he knew:

I will exalt You, O Lord, for You lifted me out of the depths. You turned my wailing into dancing; You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to You and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give You thanks forever. Psalm 30:1, 11-12.

The good news to adults who have made a major mistake in their lives is this: It's okay to run to your Father. In fact, it's the smartest thing you can do at the moment. It is your one route to freedom from confusion, guilt, shame, and self-doubt that hammer at your sanity. In the words of Paul Johnson's contemporary Christian song:

He didn't bring us this far to leave us;
He didn't teach us to swim to let us drown.
He didn't build His home in us to move away;
He didn't lift us up to let us down.

As we believe and continue to follow Him who rose from the dead (the Lord Jesus Christ), in the midst of a world that is dying, we can also rise from our own ashes. We can live again! You can start over! You can be restored. Be encouraged.

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:7-11,16,18). Amen.

******************Letter # 36 (23.9.2000)***********