DON’T BE DEFINED BY YOUR MISTAKES
You may have failed but you are not a failure. That was a moment in your life, that was one season and that doesn’t determine your future. Don’t let that mistake define who you are. If you go around wearing negative labels of divorce, addiction, failure and compromise, it will keep you from the fullness of what God has in store for you. People will try to define you by your mistakes. They’ll try to stick labels on you, remind you of all the times you failed, the times you compromised, the times you didn’t measure up and sadly, some people will choose to remember your failures more than your victories.
Don’t let people label you. Don’t allow them to determine your destiny. They cannot stop what God has ordained for your life. The only person that can stop you is you yourself. When you let your mistakes find you, when you wear labels that people stick on you, when you believe the lies from the accuser, that will keep you from your destiny and when someone keeps bringing up your past mistakes, trying to get you to live condemned, they may not realize it but they are working for the accuser. Church Gist. The enemy uses people. You can’t stop them from putting labels on you, but you can take them right off. Life is too short to let what happened in the past to keep you from the great things God has in store for your future.
God is not judging you by one mistake – by one bad season. This is what happened to Moses as a young man: God gave him the dream that he would deliver the Israelites out of slavery. He knew he was supposed to do it, but he got in a hurry and did it out of God’s timing. He saw a Hebrew slave being mistreated by an Egyptian supervisor. He did not think anyone was watching and he killed the Supervisor. He made a bad choice! He had to flee for his life. He spent 40 years on the backside of the desert – in hiding. It looked like that one mistake stopped his destiny, that one bad choice disqualified him. I’m sure in the desert, thoughts told him: “Moses, you are a failure. What were you thinking? Why are you so impatient? You blew it!” He was wearing all these negative labels. He thought that mistake would define him. The good news is that God doesn’t judge us by one mistake or by two mistakes or for some of us, by 10,000 mistakes. God’s calling on your life is irrevocable. He doesn’t change his mind. Moses had given up, he had accepted that he would never accomplish his dream.
Sometimes we can forgive others more easily than we can forgive ourselves. Some doors are supposed to close. Some people are supposed to walk away. Some opportunities are not supposed to last. Sometimes God will close that door to get you to the fullness of what he has in store for you. Church Gist. Don’t let what you’ve been through paint the rest of your life. God would not have allowed it if it was going to keep you from your purpose whether you brought the trouble on yourself or whether the Spirit led you into the desert. Learn to forgive yourself. Quit beating yourself up or being discouraged over what didn’t work out.
One thing is sure: mistakes do not cancel destiny. God doesn’t define us by our mistakes, He refines us by our mistakes. He takes our failures or wrong turns and use them to do a work in us. God has already taken into account every mistake we would make. Church Gist. You wouldn’t be alive if there wasn’t something awesome in your future now, why don’t you take off all the negative labels and put on some new labels and then declare this boldly: I am not defined by my mistakes, I am defined by what God says about me. I am forgiven, I am redeemed and my past is over. My mistakes are behind me. My failures are in my yesterday and I am not bringing them into today. God’s Mercy is bigger my mistakes. God’s Mercy is new every morning, I receive that mercy and I move into the great plan God has for me in Jesus name.
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