What happens after you screw up? I mean after you’ve made a horrible choice and made a real mess of things? What happens when everyone else finds out how you have failed?

The answer is, well that’s up to you. It can go one of three ways from here. You could:

A: Keep going down that path and turn bad into worse.

B: Hide in your shame and let this eat at you, convinced you are no longer worthy of goodness.

C: Confess it, get over it, and let God use it.

Isn’t the best choice obvious here? Of course it is! But how many of us are living in the wrong choices every single day? We’re stuck, we’re depressed, we’re embarrassed, we’re spiraling because we never gave it all to God. But guess what would happen if we did give it to God? He would do an absolutely miraculous work with this mess we’ve made!

The life story of David is Hollywood worthy. It’s a rags to riches kinda story. The smallest, youngest and least likely of all his brothers, the one dismissed from greatness, yet filled with courage. He’s the one who showed up on the battlefield and defeated the giant Goliath. He’s the one who was chosen to be the next King. And as King, with all his power and influence, he made a horrible mistake.

Do you remember what David did? In 2 Samuel 11, David stood on the roof of his palace and watched a beautiful woman bathing. He knew she was married but he wanted her. And because he was the King, he had the power to get whatever he wanted. He slept with this beautiful woman named Bathsheba, then when he found out she had become pregnant, he tried to cover up his mistake. When his coverup didn’t work, he intentionally had her husband sent to the front of the battle lines and killed.

This was wrong in every way. David had made a horrible choice, then chosen option A to keep going down that path and turn bad into worse. Now he was not only an adulterer, he was a murderer.

Next, he moved on to choice B. He hid in shame as his sin ate away at him. He became convinced his failure had dismissed him from all future goodness. But as much as that felt true, that wasn’t God’s plan.

As much as it feels like God has surely removed his blessings from your life and cancelled all good plans for you, my sister, that simply IS NOT the truth. It is the enemy’s plan to keep you hiding in your shame. That whole plan of guilt, self-lothing, and self-sabotage smells like hell to me, because that’s exactly where that plan came from! That’s hell’s plan for you, not heaven’s!

In the next chapter, 2 Samuel 12, David was hiding in his sin, unapologetic, unconfessed and unrepenting. Then God sent Nathan to David to confront him about his hidden sin. And as mad as it made David, he realized God had seen everything and God was NOT HAPPY about it.

I wasn’t raised in Church. I knew nothing of Jesus, but I remember one time my Dad said to me, “Sis, don’t be anywhere doing anything you wouldn’t want to be caught doing if Jesus came back.” It stuck with me. I was constantly fearful if I went to the wrong place and did the wrong thing, at that moment Jesus might decide that is the exact time of his divine return and catch me. I mean what unfortunate timing would that be? What horrible luck?

Let me tell you, it kept me out of a few bad places and bad decision. A few. Not all because at some point I decided I would take my chances on the timing of Jesus’ return. What no one told me was JESUS ALWAYS SEES ME. I can’t hide a single thing from him. Even the things I think are done in complete secret are blasted before the throne. Literally blasted. It’s all known!

And when David realizes God had seen everything he was trying to hide, he wrote Psalm 51. In my Bible, the heading of this chapter says specifically this is a psalm of David written when the prophet Nathan came to him after he had gone to Bathsheba. This is David finally choosing option C, confess it, get over it, and let God use it.

Verse 2-4, “Completely wash away my guilt and cleanse me from my sin. For I am conscious of my rebellion, and my sin is always before me. Against you – you alone- I have sinned and done this evil in your sight.”

David is literally miserable in his unconfessed sin. He can’t get away from it. He says, “my sin is always before me.” Now isn’t that the truth? What you did has been eating at you. You just can’t seem to shake what you did. So you carry it around in guilt and shame and the enemy of your soul is well pleased! But the God who created your soul, then sent his Son to save your soul, has a different plan. His plan is to completely wash away your guilt and cleanse you.

God not only forgives you, my sister, but he does something even more … he enables you to forgive yourself. This is what David is beginning to realize. God can take away that crippling guilt. He can make the story you tell yourself end. He can stop the replay in your mind of your failure.

Yes, God saw it. He saw it all. And yet, he still hasn’t turned away from you. Here he is, showing up today in such a personal way to say, “My girl, I want to use this for good now.”

God still used David. This wasn’t the end of David’s work. In fact, David used this relationship with beautiful Bathsheba to bring Solomon into the world. Solomon was a very wise man who later became King. And 13 generations later, through David and Bathsheba and their son Solomon, would come Jesus! God’s work was NOT done with David. It didn’t end when David screwed up. No, God still used him!

And God wants to use you! He wants to use your failure. He wants to use your weakness. Will you let God use this? If you’re looking for a journaling prompt today, that’s it: WILL I LET GOD USE THIS?

Some of the greatest marriage ministries I know were formed in the middle of marriages that were absolutely crushed by sin, then God put them back together again. Who better to show a husband and wife how to come back together after betrayal than a couple who has seen God’s redemptive work first hand?

Let me tell you, I can teach you a different perspective on your teenagers poor choices because I messed up on handling one of mine. I know what doesn’t work and I can give you a first hand account of how fixating on the little things will undermine the big things and blow up in your face. I can tell you of the importance of prayer because I screwed that up. But all of that doesn’t dismiss me, it makes me a real life example God can use.

I can tell you about starting a new business and falsely believing it will explode with success if you just invest more money in it. With a dozen maxed out credit cards and no way to pay the minimums on any of them, I met failure face to face. I can tell you everything I did wrong. I can tell you about the car we bought because we thought that’s the car you had to drive to look successful and attract the new clients. I can tell you about the facade we worked overtime to keep up while it all fell apart. And I can tell you how God let us faceplant in the most humiliating and divine way so that we would learn money would never make us happy and all the pretty things were just getting in the way.

God wants to use you! He wants to use where you messed up. He wants to use where you got it wrong. And he wants to use what he alone is making right now!

David says in verse 10 of this psalm, written after Nathan confronts him about his hidden sin, “God, create a clean heart for me and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

When God creates, it’s an absolute miracle. God can take nothing and create anything. It’s how he created the entire universe from nothingness. His creation is miraculous, and David knew that well. So when he is asking God to CREATE IN HIM a clean heart, he is asking for a miraculous work. And God did exactly that.

God can do that for you too. He can do a miraculous work right here in your mess. He can make something remarkably beautiful out of these ruins. God can use YOU!

My friend Catherine is quitting her full time job and diving head first into the calling God has on her life. The calling is to help people struggling with addiction. God is using Catherine in the most beautiful way. But understand, it comes from a one time colossal mess. It comes from a rock bottom in her own place of addiction where she had lost absolutely everything for the next drink that would numb the pain. God did a miraculous work in Catherine and in her family. Literally, only God could have done this, and now he’s using it!

Catherine is now choosing option C: She confessed it. She got over it. And now she’s just letting God use it. And ohhhhh, how God is using it!

Check out verse 10 in the MSG translation, “God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.”

A Genesis week. This is referring to the week where God created the Universe, day by day. Where his spirit hovered over the dark, empty nothingness and brought light. Where he separated the waters and brought dry land. Where he formed life and directed order.

THIS IS WHAT GOD WANTS TO DO WITH THE CHAOS OF YOUR LIFE! He wants to take every single ounce of darkness and bring his light. He wants to take all of this mess and put it in order. He wants to take what is too far gone and absolutely without hope and breath life into it. He wants to create something brand new here.

Will you give him permission to come into your life, into your chaos, into your sin and shame, into your hurt and regret, and make a fresh start? Will you let him shape a Genesis week here?

God wants to do what only he can do for you, but you have to let him. Just let him. For real. Let him.

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