Don't Let Your Failures Bind You -- There is Freedom in Christ!

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So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! - 2Corinthians 5: 16-17 (NLT)

In 1974 a Grand Jury indicted the Watergate Seven. These were seven individuals who were advisors to then President Nixon and assisted with the now infamous Watergate cover-up. One of the seven was given a copy of C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity" by a friend as he was facing prosecution. The result led this man to the Lord and even though he desperately wanted to avoid jail time, he cut a deal with prosecutors to admit to Obstruction of Justice, which he knew he was guilty of. This plea came at a time when it appeared the prosecution was considering dropping the charges. But he knew he what he had done wrong. He was sentenced to 1-3 years in prison and began serving his sentence. While in prison he was called by God to create a prison ministry because of the shortcomings of rehabilitation and the injustices in the justice system.

Upon his release from prison, Chuck Colson became one of the top evangelical voices for the next four decades; right up until today. He founded Prison Fellowship to promote changes in the justice system. He wrote over 20 books and received honorary degrees from various colleges. He was awarded the highest award from the Salvation Army in 1990 and in 1993 won the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, which carried with it a one million dollar award. He promptly donated the 1 million to Prison Fellowship, as he has always done with his speaking fees and royalties. God beloved, can use anyone.

"I--yes, I alone--will blot out your sins for my own sake and will never think of them again. -- Isaiah 43: 25 (NLT)

It was God's will to use the lowest point in the life of Charles Colson, politician, to transform him into Chuck Colson, Evangelist for Christ. The sobering truth we need to wrap our minds around today is that your past can either refine you or it can define you -- the choice is yours.

Refining is a process used in metallurgy. It is a process by which the impurities are removed through the application of intense heat. So God too will go about using the times of great heat in our lives to refine out of us the impurities that separate us from Him. Proverbs teaches us:

Remove the dross from the silver, and out comes material for the silversmith; - Proverbs 25: 4 (NIV)

The dross is the impurities that keep silver from being sterling. The silversmith cannot work with the silver until the dross is removed. God cannot work with us until the dross is removed. Take a look at the Apostle Paul, who was originally Saul of Tarsus. We first meet him at the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr:

At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. -- Acts 7: 57-58 (NIV)

Saul presided over the death of Stephen, as well as many other Christians. He led the persecution of the early church. He had about as bad a past as any Christian could have. But God had a purpose for him:

But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." -- Acts 9: 15-16 (NIV)

And Saul would suffer for Christ. Five different times receiving 39 lashes. Three times beaten with rods. Put in prison, whipped and flogged. Three times shipwrecked including one time spending the entire night adrift at sea. Eventually executed for his beliefs. He would suffer but not as the Saul of his past but as the Paul God intended him to be! Some times God has to change some things in you in order for you to become who He wants you to be! The name Saul would have defined him and followed him the rest of his life. God had to change who he was. He had to refine out of him the heavy dross his past had become to his future. Paul never forgot where God found him but he never allowed it to define him:

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. -- Philippians 3: 12-14 (NIV)

He focuses on one thing -- the prize for which God is calling us. And he does it simply by forgetting what is past and straining towards what lies ahead. That is how your past will refine you. You learn, you change, and you move on. The future lies ahead but too often we are passive in our pursuit of it. We over-Christianize things. We say that we are "waiting for God" when sometimes He is actually waiting for us. We do not strain properly towards the future. Straining towards the future takes an effort. Our Christianity is not meant to be a passive endeavor. God has a future out there for each and every one of us. A future that is in our overall best interest and brings glory to His name. But we have to strain towards it. God isn't text messaging you instructions tomorrow beloved. We have to seek His face. We have to seek His will.

In the Old Testament we see a character who was allowing his past to define who he was. To say Jacob came from a dysfunctional family is an understatement. His family today could have been on an episode of Jerry Springer! His very name means "deceiver" -- not exactly a ringing endorsement from your parents! First he deceives his brother Esau out of his birthright as the first born son for a mere bowl of lentils. Next he deceives his father Isaac, taking advantage of his old age and blindness, and tricks him into giving the firstborn blessing to him instead of his brother. Mind you, he did this at the direction and with the help of his mother! With his brother wanting to kill him he has to flee from his home and eventually ends up in the company of Laban. He agrees to work seven years for Laban in exchange for his daughter in marriage but Laban swindles Jacob and he has to take both daughters and work 14 years. Sometimes when you live by deception, it can bite you too! But Jacob was a far better deceiver than Laban and he used the extra time to swindle the vast majority of Laban's wealth from him. As Jacob is heading back to try and reconcile with his brother, we see that he is up all night wrestling with God.

So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." The man asked him, "What is your name?"  "Jacob," he answered. -- Genesis 32: 24-27 (NIV)

God knew what his name was beloved but he wanted to see if Jacob knew who he was. Did he know he was a deceiver? Did he know and understand his past? Was he ready to wrestle out of who he was and move into who God wanted him to be? God will always need to change who we think we are in order for us to be used by Him. He may need to change our name and what the world tells us it means. Or what our parents told us we would become. Or what our teachers spoke over our lives. Or how our sin and behavior had started to define us. Maybe you were Bob the drinker. Mary the adulteress. Joe the ex-felon. Suzy the woman who was raped. We all know these people. They sit next to us each and every Sunday in church. They are free in Christ except for that thing in their past that they still let define them. They are still filled with the dross of their past and desperately need God to purify it out of them. The sad thing is they have allowed it to define them for decades in some cases. The pain, the hurt, the addiction, the shame. All the things the devil will use against us as we try and advance in our walk with God. But for every Bob the drinker there also was Saul the persecutor. There was Jacob the deceiver. And the good news today is that God has a whole new name for you if you would just wrestle with him and refuse to let go:

Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome." -- Genesis 32: 28 (NIV)

And thus the nation of Israel was born. From one man who refused to let go of God. We will spend our lives wrestling with the enemy and with God. There is only one we need to hold onto. The name Israel is translated as "he who strives with God" or in some cases, "he will be a prince of God." That is where God can take you. That is how much your past does not have to define you. From a deceiver to a prince of God. From the lead persecutor of the early church to writing three quarters of the New Testament and evangelizing the known world. God wants to define your future beloved!

Lastly, while it important to not allow our past failures to define our future in Christ it is equally important to not allow our failures while following Christ deter us either. The Bible teaches us that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The reality is that no matter how spiritual someone may appear, it is only an appearance. We all will sin as long as we reside in this flesh. The difference should be a conviction for that sin from the Holy Spirit. Do you think Jacob was perfect after he became Israel? He still had 12 children through two wives and two maidservants. He still overly favored Joseph to the point that it bred murderous jealousy from the other sons. As for the Apostle Paul - he penned these words:

So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don't really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate. But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.  And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can't. I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don't want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.  I have discovered this principle of life--that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong.   -- Romans 7: 14-21 (NLT)

Paul and Jacob were not plaster saints; they were human beings. Well after King David was considered a man after God's own heart he became an adulterer and a murderer. After three years of following Jesus and learning from Him and seeing all of the miracles first hand -- Peter still denied Christ three times. After being told he would! Being saved is not an end to sin but a beginning of recognizing it for what it is and minimizing the long term damage from it by repenting right away. King David would recover because he repented. There were still consequences from his actions -- sin always has consequences. But God restored him. Peter too would be restored by Jesus and would go on to preach the Pentecost sermon that saw God save 3000 and start the church we now are a part of.

The key verse today reminds us that when we allow our past to define us we are actually looking at our life through human terms. Through our human lens of failure and unforgiveness. We actually reduce Christ in our lives to human terms when we allow the world to dictate the definition of who we are. We strip Him of the power and victory that He appropriated for us on Calvary. Anyone who is in Christ has a new life now. Just like Jacob become Israel, Saul became Paul and Charles Colson the Watergate Felon became Chuck Colson the Preacher of the Gospel. The old life is gone when we allow it to refine us and remove the impure dross and our human understanding of God and the limits the world put on Him. Praise the Lord for how differently we know Him now!

Reverend Anthony Wade -- January 25, 2012

Authors Bio:
Credentialed Minister of the Gospel for the Assemblies of God. Owner and founder of 828 ministries. Vice President for Goodwill Industries. Always remember that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.