Recently I was over the house of some friends of mine who had just gotten the interior of their house painted. They showed me pictures of the moving that they had to do before everything was painted. It was a mess! They had to clear out the living room, the kitchen, and the bedrooms. It was chaos everywhere. But by the time I saw the finished product, everything had been restored back to order and the remodeling of the home looked fantastic. It had gone from a mess to a masterpiece.
Saints, you may feel like right about now things are simply a mess in your life. Your finances are a mess, your health is a mess, your family situation is a mess, your marriage is a mess, the situation on your job is a mess, things in the church are a mess. Life just seems to be one big mess! But I want to remind you today that the God we serve specializes in taking a mess and turning it into a masterpiece. That's what He did in the Beginning.
When you read Genesis chapter 1, the bible says that the earth was without form and void, and that darkness was upon the face of the deep. That sounds like one big mess to me. But by the end of the narrative, in six days, God had turned what looked like a mess into the masterpiece of His Creation.
I am convinced saints that the same God who restored order to the Universe back in the Beginning, can restore order to the mess of your life as well. But there are a few things that we must do in order to allow the Lord to turn our mess into a masterpiece.
Number one, we have to admit that we are in a Mess. Whether we created the mess or not or whether we're responsible for the mess or not, we still have to be honest and admit that it's a Mess. There are too many people in denial in regards to the mess that their lives are in. We need to quit trying to rationalize (telling rational lies) and make excuses for the mess and call it what it is; it's a Mess. This will grant us the humility to allow God to come in and straighten this mess out.
Then we need to repent. For many of us, we are responsible for some of the mess that our lives are in. We did make some bad decisions, we did make some wrong choices, we have developed some unhealthy habits, and its gotten us into the mess that we're in. The reason why repentance (to think again) is so significant is because if God were to come in and clean up the mess and we haven't learned from the mess that we've made, we'll simply make another mess all over again. This is not the Will of the Lord. Let the Holy Spirit teach us, train us, and convict us so that we won't be apt to keep making the same mess over and over again.
Lastly, we need to acknowledge and admit that we are not the maker of the Masterpiece. A lot of times, once the mess has been cleaned up, we then think that we're equipped to start working on the Masterpiece. Wrong. We can't make the Masterpiece, God is the Maker of the Masterpiece.
When my friends got their house painted, they hired a professional painter. They didn't try to paint their house themselves. I suspect if they had, it just would've been another mess all over again. But they knew their limitations. And what would it have been like if they had tried to tell the painter how to do their job? A lot of times that's how we are with God.
Why doesn't God do this? Why doesn't God do that? Why didn't He do it like this? Why doesn't He do it like that? Have you ever created a universe? Have you ever originated life? Have you ever been the Designer of life? So then if you're not the painter (hopefully you're following the analogy) then go somewhere and sit down. That's what we need to do with God.
Stay out of His Way, stay in your lane, and let Him proceed to construct a masterpiece out of your life. He's able saints. No matter what the mess, He's willing and able to turn it into a masterpiece.
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