Grace Is Not an Undo Button

In our walk with God, many of us have somehow absorbed the belief that we can make a mess of our lives and then the Lord will come in, because that is what Jesus died for, right, and simply hit the undo button.

But life does not work that way.

There are missed opportunities that are missed forever. There are decisions permanently sealed by time that we cannot unmake, unbend, or redo.

And sometimes we aren't mourning one giant, catastrophic mistake. Sometimes it is a scattering of tiny, everyday choices that seemed insignificant when we made them but accumulated over the years. One decision didn't change everything. But one decision became another, another became a pattern, and eventually we looked around and realized that years had passed.

There is a difference between God forgiving a decision and God erasing the consequences of that decision. We sometimes treat those things as though they are one and the same, but they aren't.

Imagine going on a cruise, having the time of your life, meeting a nice man, sleeping with him, and returning home only to discover that you are pregnant.

God can forgive you completely. But forgiveness doesn't mean He is going to hit “undo” on the pregnancy.

Sometimes biology simply does what biology does, and the consequence of that cruise fling is an unplanned pregnancy. You might later discover that the man is married. He isn't leaving his wife. He doesn't want a relationship with you, and perhaps he wants no involvement with the child.

You can take him to court. You may receive child support faithfully deposited into your bank account every month. But financial support may be the only kind of fatherly provision he is willing to offer.

Meanwhile, you may find yourself looking at his Instagram, watching him travel with his wife and the children he openly embraces while your child is never included in those family pictures or given a ticket for those trips.

That hurts.

But sometimes that is what consequences look like.

Forgiveness can free us from condemnation without transporting us backward in time to the moment before the decision was made.

The Danger of Assuming There Will Always Be More Time

Then there are the smaller choices we make because we assume there will always be more time.

One place I believe this can happen is in the way Christians sometimes talk about a “due season” for marriage.

We can develop this idea that God has one appointed date, one appointed moment, and one appointed person for us to marry, and that the entire thing is already written in stone. God supposedly has the spouse, house, children, dog, cat, city, state, neighborhood, and white picket fence mapped out. Our only responsibility is to somehow discover the elusive “Will of God” for that area of our lives.

But that kind of thinking can leave a person locked inside a prayer closet praying for opportunities instead of actually pursuing them.

Maybe your homegirls invite you to a jazz concert, but you decide you're too spiritual for that. You think it's “worldly,” so you'd rather stay home and pray all night for God to send you a husband.

Meanwhile, perhaps there are several perfectly suitable men at that concert whom you could have met, talked to, gotten to know, and ultimately chosen from.

Sometimes the answer to the prayer isn't another night in the prayer closet.

Sometimes you need to go to the jazz concert.

Months can become years. Years can become decades. And eventually, a person can look back and wonder where the time went.

There is wisdom in recognizing that some opportunities are time-sensitive. Faith should not become an excuse for passivity.

Redemption Is Not Always Restoration of the Exact Thing You Lost

Redemption does not always mean getting back exactly what was lost.

Maybe there was a guy who sat across from you in freshman chemistry. You became friends. You liked him, and maybe he liked you too, but neither of you had the courage to say anything.

You told your friends how you felt, and they warned you, “Don't say anything! What if it turns out badly?”

So you listened.

You stayed friends.  

Years passed.

Then one day, he pops up with a fiancée.

Not a girlfriend. Not a boo thang.  Not a situationship. 

A fiancée.

Suddenly, all those feelings you kept buried come rushing to the surface, and you finally tell him how you've felt all these years.

But now it is too late.

He is engaged. He has made a commitment to another woman, and he is preparing to marry her.

God being a Redeemer does not necessarily mean that engagement will collapse so the two of you can finally have the relationship you should have pursued years ago.

Sometimes redemption means taking the loss, grieving it, learning from it, and carrying that wisdom forward.

Maybe another opportunity for love comes along. But this time, you don't spend five years wondering whether you should say something. And perhaps the man doesn't either, because both of you have reached an age and level of maturity where you understand that life is too short for all that unnecessary guessing.

The first opportunity taught you something.

The second time, you move differently.

That can be redemption too.