As human beings, I think we naturally crave new starts; do overs. With each New Year, we look forward to the year ahead, making resolutions in hopes for a better year than the one just past. We set goals, desiring improvement in specific areas. Each morning, in a sense, is a new start for us. God’s mercies are new each morning, and as the dawn breaks, we receive fresh opportunity to live for Christ.
In God’s providence, we sometimes experience major changes in our life that shake us to the core and put us in a position where we feel like we have to start all over again. This happened to me a little over a year ago when my husband left Christianity. In so many ways, it felt like I was starting over again. But, as I have walked this journey, I have realized that though it feels like the restart button was pushed on my life, what really is happening is all a part of the same journey I had already been on. You see, God is using every situation and circumstance in my life, in your life, to shape me, and you, more and more into the image of Christ. Our one “do over” moment as believers was at the point of salvation. It was at that moment that God restarted our lives, so to speak, to turn us radically away from living for ourselves to living for Him.
If you are going through a heart-wrenching experience right now as a believer and are wondering how in the world you will pick up the pieces of your life and begin to build again, let me lovingly tell you that you can’t. As you pray and seek Christ’s face for answers to the questions of why, how, what, and when, He Himself will pick you up and show you that He will use your broken pieces for His glory. We must not make an idol out of our past (wanting “the good old days” back) or our future in this life (coveting something you lust after for your own life). Seek to be a Christian today, and as you do, God will continue the work He started in you. You see a broken life, but He sees a masterpiece in progress, and every circumstance of life is a part of fashioning you into His bride who will one day see Him face to face forever.
