By Brenda Branson

When a marriage is broken, when a life is destroyed by abuse or addiction, when a heart is filled with bitterness, when a ministry is plagued with scandal, does that mean you are resigned to God’s second best for the rest of your life?

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible tells of people who failed to live up to God’s ideal. Not one of them disrupted God’s plan of redemption. In spite of man’s failure, God’s faithfulness and purpose remained intact.

God may not have to settle for second best, but how about you?  Have you ever made a mistake that has seriously impacted the rest of your life?  Do you feel like decades of your life have been wasted because you were entangled in an abusive relationship?

Are you doomed to accept the scraps of a sad existence because you don’t see any other options?  Does God take you out of active service forever because you deliberately walked off the path of obedience?

It is true that we all have to endure the consequences of our choices, but if we sit too long in the pity parlor thinking about what might have been, we will miss God’s wonderful plan for the rest of our lives!

God never wastes any of your experiences and does not punish you by limiting you to only part of His goodness. In God’s hands, failure can become your greatest teacher as you realize how much you need Him. Failure and pain can draw you closer to God in a way that success and self-sufficiency cannot. 

When God rebuilds a life, He does not use second-rate materials just because you messed up the first time around. His love is always generous and His mercies are “new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness, O Lord” (Lam. 3:22–23).

You don’t have to settle for mere crumbs, because you have an advocate who pleads your case (1 John 2:1–2).  Jesus stands before the Father on your behalf as your defense attorney.  His sacrifice on the cross completely paid the price for your sins and failures. Jesus satisfied the law of God on our behalf, and will come to your defense when the enemy tries to accuse and destroy.

In God’s plan, failure isn’t fatal or final!  “The steps of a man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way.  Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord holds him with His hand” (Ps. 37:23–24).

How can you be successful in God’s sight when you have failed so miserably?  The secret is by allowing His grace to transform your failures into opportunities to grow closer to Him, to develop a greater passion for living, to learn valuable lessons from past mistakes, to reach out to others with compassion and mercy.

When a diamond is lost in a mudslide, it does not lose its value just because it is caked with mud and grime. The hand of the jeweler can gently clean it and restore its luster. When God restores and revitalizes a life that has been wrecked and cast aside, it shines as brilliantly as the most precious diamond in the jeweler’s case.

You may have wandered off the path of God’s best for your life, but the path is still there!  You do not have to stay in the brambles of your failures or live in the mediocrity of “good enough” Christianity. God will meet you right where you are and, if you let Him, He will guide you back in the right direction.

In her book Look at It This Way, Jan Silvious writes, “God loves you and longs for you to lean on Him.  He will give you more than your what-might-have-been could ever give you.  He knows you, loves you, and has plans for you. Trust Him. He knows where you have been and He knows what you long for.  He is God. As long as you have breath, God has a purpose for your life, and your job is to be about living it.”

Don’t listen to the voice of the accuser or the discouraging words of negative-minded people who say you must settle for less than God’s best because of your circumstances.  It’s not true!  The God we serve is more powerful than any of your past mistakes. Your difficult circumstances may not change, but God will change you—if you let Him.

Stop languishing in what might have been.  The best is yet to come!

“I am sure that God Who began the good work within you will continue His work until it is finally finished on that day when Christ Jesus comes back again!” (Phil. 1:6)