Part II
Some of us—maybe most of us—have made some poor choices at the crossroads of life. We’ve chosen the wrong path and we wonder if it’s just too late now. What do we do when we’re living with a wrong choice, one we would not make again, but now we have to live with it?
I want to encourage you to know that God specializes in turning our deserts into gardens and our ashes into beauty. It’s never too late for God to make something good out of our lives. The question is, what do we do about those wrong choices from the past?
First, we have to acknowledge that when we don’t make good decisions, we cannot expect to avoid the consequences of our choices. You may feel that you made a bad decision out of ignorance. If you had known where that bad decision would lead, you wouldn’t have gone there. And that may be true. Even so, the consequences are there, and they must be confronted.
I think of a young woman I know who just about ran her life into the ground, with drugs and alcohol and wrong relationships, before she came to know Christ as her Savior. She would never make those choices now, and other people in her life played a critical part in leading her down this wrong path. But she still has to face the consequences of living that kind of life. However, she has not allowed it to make her bitter or to question God, and now she is moving into a really good place in her life, where she is truly getting to know God and God is using her story to encourage and help others.
I think many of us would have to admit that in most cases we have chosen the wrong path even though we knew better. We just chose to ignore the potential consequences because we wanted what we wanted when we wanted it. We wanted to be in control of our lives, and we thought we could run our lives better than God.
How many women have told me of their decisions to marry a man that they knew was not God’s choice for their lives. Yet they wanted him, and so they are now living with the consequences of being married to the wrong man.
How many women have chosen to become involved with the wrong men and ended up in affairs and illicit sex, with broken hearts and damaged lives? I have personally tried to tell many women what the consequences of these relationships would be, but they often don’t have ears to hear. They can’t believe it would happen to them. So, in spite of their awareness of a bad decision, they make it anyway.
Living with Wrong Decisions
So, you’ve made some wrong decisions. What do you do now? Is life over? Is there no way back? Here are some suggestions to help you live with your wrong decisions:
- Own up to your wrong decisions.
Don’t live in denial. Don’t keep shifting blame. Don’t try to ignore it. Don’t make up excuses. Just get it out in the open, first with God. Confess it to him. Then you may or may not need to talk about it with someone else. But call it what it is, ask for forgiveness, and bring it out into the light. Until we own up to our part in the wrong decisions of our lives, we can never get past them.
- Refuse to live in despair.
You serve a God of second chances—many second chances. You don’t have to live in despair, even over bad decisions that have affected your entire life.
Maybe you married the wrong man. You had an abortion. You committed adultery or fornication. You spent money you should not have spent. You lied to your boss. You chose the wrong career. You went to the wrong school. You walked away from God and the church. You bought the wrong house. You ate the wrong food. You chose the wrong friend. You went to the wrong church.
I don’t know what is on your list, but I know that God wants to make an example of how he can still be glorified, even in the midst of your wrong decisions.
So many times we give up on ourselves, live in guilt and settle for so much less than God wants to do for us, just because we can’t forgive ourselves or get beyond the wrong decisions of our lives. Don’t you know that your enemy wants to keep you mired down in the consequences of your wrong decision? Don’t let him win. You don’t have to live in despair and regret, even if you live with the consequences of wrong decisions.
- Start where you are and go forward.
The Bible is full of examples and admonitions for us to believe that God can make good things even out of our messes.
Isaiah 51:3: The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.
Isaiah 58:11: The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
Isaiah 61:1-3: The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.
You can be an oak of righteousness, if you will put your past behind you and go forward from where you are. Yes, even though you’re living with the consequences of wrong decisions.
I’ve made many decisions that were wrong, some more so than others. The worst decisions were the ones I knew were wrong when I made them. But there have been others that were not so intentional, just misguided. For example, financial decisions that were made too hastily, and ended up costing me money.
But I’m here to tell you today that God remembers our frame and knows that we are dust, so it doesn’t surprise him to see how often we make wrong decisions. What must, however, break his heart is to see how we wallow in those wrong decisions and allow them to keep us living in guilt and despair instead of taking our medicine and going forward. What must break God’s heart is to see how we don’t learn lessons that we need to learn from our wrong decisions, and we keep making the same ones over and over. It must indeed grieve God to see that we don’t allow him to turn our deserts into gardens and our ashes into beauty.
Determine by God’s grace that you will go back to the ancient paths. Wherever you are, in whatever mess you may find yourself, it’s never too late to ask for the ancient paths and go back to God’s way. You may have to sever some relationships. You may have to change jobs. You may have to confess to some dishonest thing you’ve said or done. You may have to make restitution for harm that has been caused by your wrong choice. But whatever it takes, go back to the ancient paths. You will never know the fullness of joy that God has for you until you ask for the ancient paths.
God can give you the grace to live with whatever bad or wrong decision you have made, even the ones that last for a lifetime, if you will allow him to do that in your life. And you will be amazed at how you can find joy and peace and fulfillment and be used of God even though you’ve made some wrong choices and bad decisions.
That’s the kind of God we serve. He has all power. He can do anything. Are you willing to let him take your wrong decision today and make something good out of it? Are you willing to stop using your bad choices as excuses for not going forward with God and being a blessing to others? Are you willing to allow him to put your past behind you so you can be all that God wants you to be? Are you willing to learn from those wrong decisions so you don’t heap bad decisions upon bad decisions? If so, you can find a fresh start today, right here, right now.
Jeremiah’s exhortation to us is to seek the ancient path and the good way, and then walk in it. Just do it. Obey. I’m often saddened when I talk with people who are at some crossroad in their lives, and they seem to want to know where the good way is. But then I discover that they only want to know the good way if it is easy, or if it suits them, or if it is the way they want to go.
Remember this verse from Jeremiah 6:16:
This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Stand and look down the road; consider the eternal consequences, and ask for and then choose the ancient way. You’ll never be sorry that you did. That is the way to find rest for your soul—true rest.