Part II –
We looked at four women in the Bible who made some very bad decisions: Eve, Sarah, Bathsheba and Sapphira. I’m sure you recall that Eve decided to eat the forbidden fruit, Sarah decided to talk her husband, Abraham, into having a baby by her maid, Hagar, Bathsheba decided to have an illicit relationship with David, and Sapphira decided to lie about money.
At the time they made these decisions, none of them imagined the horrendous consequences that would ensue as a result. I’m sure had they known the grief and pain and trouble they would have, they would have changed their decisions. But you see, they forgot to count the costs. As I’ve often said, you can choose your sin, but you can’t choose its consequences.
Consequences of Wrong Decisions
So, here we see four women who made wrong decisions, and they had to suffer the consequences. For Eve, it was banishment from Eden and pain in childbearing and difficulty in relationships. She watched Cain kill Abel, one son kill another. She had to work by the sweat of her brow. Life wasn’t easy any longer.
For Sarah she brought on the human race an animosity between races that still troubles our world today, between Arabs and Jews.
For Bathsheba, she lost her good husband Uriah, whom David had killed. We read in the Bible that, “When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him.” Then she lost the baby, the child of David. For seven days she had to watch her baby dying, and nothing could save him. David pleaded with God; he fasted and spent the nights lying on the ground. But the baby died.
For Sapphira, her decision brought immediate and dire consequences. She was confronted by Peter and lied about the money, and then was struck dead at his feet, only three hours after her husband had suffered the same fate, unknown to her.
Decisions always bring consequences. And when we don’t make good decisions, we cannot expect to avoid the consequences. We can make a list of the reasons we should not be held accountable for these bad decisions, but in the end, we cannot shift blame when we knew better and failed to make good decisions.
Some of us feel that we made bad decisions out of ignorance. Obviously, if we had known where these bad decisions would lead, we wouldn’t have made them. But in most cases, it wasn’t that we didn’t know better; it was rather that we chose to ignore the possibilities.
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 my suggestions to help you live with your wrong decisions:
1. 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.
2. 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. So:
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.
3. 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. Here’s an encouraging verse from Isaiah:
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 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 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.
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.