He Knew All Along

But wait o, you saw that The New Goldinwords was back in action, and you thought that #TeleTuesdays wouldn’t come back also??? Ei! Your faith needs some fertilizer!

Don’t mind me though, I’m glad to be back and I look forward to more opportunities to reconnect over here with you all, and I hope that you keep coming back to sample more great writing!

To ease you back into the flow of things today, let me share something with you that some of you may be identifying with already, or somewhere down the line I expect you to come across…

Allow me to start off with a short word of encouragement…*sigh*…are you aware that He Knew all along??!

Read more: He Knew All Along

Wait, let’s back up a few steps.

Has God been good to you before? From that remote help that came through in the nick of time that shouldn’t have been possible, to that loss you should’ve suffered that you somehow managed to avoid, through even those horrible experiences you shouldn’t have survived and yet somehow you made it to the other side—there are many things that we can use to identify the good that God has done in our lives whenever we remember to count our blessings.

Now, have you disappointed Him before? Allow me to raise up my hand and rush to the front of the line to give a resounding shout of, “Yes!”

I’m a Grace Addict and I’ve been abusing that good good thing since time immemorial (this isn’t a confessional, so pardon me if I don’t go into specifics, but let me assure you that I, like you, do also fall afoul of ‘missing the mark’, aka. Sin).

Now, a thought occurred to me a few days ago that stopped me in my tracks. See, I had been brooding over my inadequacies and my personal recent crises of faith (long story, maybe we can get into that another time), and because I dared to put myself in God’s shoes for a bit, I couldn’t help but condemn myself upandan the yard. The weight was so crushing as my shortcomings and inadequacies bore down on me until an odd thought pierced through the fog – He knew!

When God was doing me all that good, years, months, days, hours before I would stumble, HE KNEW that I would let Him down – and yet He was good to me anyway.

Now, that’s an unbelievably Forgiving God; One who could be slighted by such an insignificant being like me but still choose to fulfil His promise to me—especially when all the while He knew that I would mess up in the future.

How many of you would let your child take your car out knowing with absolute certainty that they would overspeed and put their lives and your car in danger? I know I wouldn’t. Heck, we’re from a generation who had parents who would even prophylactically beat you if your sibling or even close friend did something they think deserves a beating – lest you think it’s okay to have done that and/or decide to emulate them… But this God takes it all in stride, choosing to be good to us even when as certainly as night follows day, He knows we will break His heart soon enough, repeatedly, sometimes even over the same issue time and time again.

I froze for a few minutes because it suddenly dawned on me that no matter how far I had strayed or would ever stray, He had chosen not just to honour His end of the bargain but to be always only a step away the moment I turn back to Him.

I don’t fully understand it myself, but I am comforted that I cannot go so far as to lose my way back into the Grace of God.

If from afar off He saw that I would mess up and still did not hold it against me, what do I gain by holding it against myself? I therefore condemn myself because in a warped vein of reasoning, I think that doing that will somehow help me atone for my wrongdoing. This is why it’s also important in repenting that you learn to forgive yourself also.

Sometimes (usually) it really is as easy as acknowledging your wrong, confessing it, repenting from it, and moving forward once more surrounded by His Grace.

The problem often though is thus—we LIKE the Sin.

Can a man take fire to his bosom and his clothes not be burned?
Can one walk on hot coals, and his feet not be seared? – Proverbs 6:27-28

Could that be why eventually we are allowed to come to the ruin promised by the sin we entangle ourselves with so that (like the Prodigal Son) there is really no other sensible course of action than to return to the Source of our being?

I am comforted that He already budgeted Forgiveness for me before time began. I am also oh-so-gladdened that this very season is evidence of His foreknowledge that we would need the greatest level of forgiveness in the future.

And it’s not that we are supposed to continue messing up just because He has made provision for it, but that we should rest assured that we cannot exhaust His patience and care for us, no matter what we do.

Broken, abused, misused, lost, angry, upset, come one and come all…this is what Grace is made for.

– Tele 🙂