Dear Christian,

When you look backwards at your life, witnessing with eyes that have learned the lessons your past has taught you, and the events of those lessons play out in the manner in which they did, you may think to yourself the same words of that humble Hobbit from a world eerily similar to your own; “I wish it had never come to me.” And were you able to flip through the pages of your life as easily as those of his story, you could rightly speak the same words of the Wizard who counseled him; “that is not for you to decide, you must only decide what to do with the time that has been given you.”

How true these words are for us, fellow Saints of the most high God. How many moments of your time, how many hours, how many seasons of your life has your heart been aimed deep into your past, examining and studying and seeking to its events? How many hairs upon your head have shot to gray through the efforts you have exerted to understand, and thereby change the effects your past has had on you?

How many times has your heart bled with the thought of “If only these things never happened.”? Or, “If only they happened differently. If only I responded…differently”? What feelings, what emotions, can you attach to the memories you wish you didn’t have, that can change them?

With regret or shame, guilt or anger, fueling your backwards facing memories, the thoughts of your past will come crashing into your present, forcing you to think; “I would be more prepared for today, I would be smarter, I would be wiser, I would be well equipped to face the giants and dragons that have come to my shores, if only those memories were different.” If you were to look backwards at your life, and not see those things, or those situations, as they actually happened, but instead, you may hope, you see nothing at all… “then,” your thoughts will continue, “then, my life today would be better. If only my parents never sinned in that way. If only my spouse never did what my spouse did. If only my child never sinned in that way. If only I didn't sin in that way…then, then, oh how I wish it were true, because then my life would be better today.”

Hear me clearly brothers and sisters, and were you to skip the rest of this letter, ignoring everything between here and the last paragraph, let this single truth be all that you read: The events of your life played out with the direct permission of the God who has promised to use them for your good.

Were your past darker; were your past more filled with the wickedness that you wish it was empty of, if that is even possible; were there more sin, more evil, more depravity, more mistakes, more bad choices…still, all of it would be nothing but the tinder by which your King would burn that past to ash.

Were the black waters of hell the current your past traveled upon to become your present; were the crawling underlings of satan himself to be those who have raised you; were your past, be it as far back as your childhood or as recent as this morning, saturated with sufferings so dark that the light of a thousand suns would be helpless to break through the blankets of despair that filled your skies…not a single occurrence of that imagined past would be able to slow or steer the plans of the God who saved you.

If…

If…you have come to see that your sins have earned you hell, and you now lament and mourn and hate the sins you struggle to avoid, then God will use them. If you have repented of your sins and believed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then the white hot wrath of God has been poured out on every one of your sins, as He placed them onto the blood and body of His only begotten Son. Then, and only then, will the righteousness of Christ be given to you, and you will be divinely and intentionally placed into the timeless tides of eternity whose current ebbs and flows as God commands it to.

You were custom made, my friend, to endure everything that you have endured,

and everything that you ever will endure, because God made you on purpose.

There was no accident in the heavenlies, when your father and mother made you, regardless of the manner in which they did so. It was a time, long written down, for God to sew you together within the depths of your mother’s womb, just as it had been written down when He would knit together your father and mother, and theirs before them. He not only created you on purpose, He created you on purpose for now. We need not look backwards, grieving over a past we lack the ability to reconcile with, for that past, as stained as it may have been by your sins and the sins of others, because it bled to death on the Cross to which it was nailed.

Yes, cry tears of sorrow from wells within your heart that you are sure will never dry; but remember this, oh saint, that God custom made you, with divine and perfect intent, to weather the storms He has allowed for you to sail through.

Each storm, a gale unseen by your human eyes, and unwanted by your human heart, has accomplished nothing but to push you further and further into a future He made you to tame. He gave you strengths, He gave you weaknesses, He gave you gifts and talents and grit and understanding, knowing full well you would need all of them to navigate every hurricane on your horizon. 

Fear not the wind oh weak one, God made you for it.

Every hurt of your past that your wetted eyes may tremble to look upon, is nothing but the blows of a mighty mallet hammering you into shape upon the anvil that is His sovereignty. When every undying memory of every action you wish you didn't take, or inaction you wish you did, meets the neon surface of His rule and reign…they will hurt you, yes. They will cause you to question, yes. They will birth showers of sparks and flames of fire that crawl through everything in your life, leaving blackened trails through the veins of your new heart, and there will be floating embers you still fight to avoid, but they have done nothing to slow or stop His promise to use them for your good.

Take heart Christian! You were made for this! Be bold you blood bought Saint, be bold! Your past may be dark and its demons may still call your name through their forked and unforgiving tongues, but the voice of Him who planned on their calling is far louder. Hear His voice, you son. Hear His voice, you daughter. Let the beating flesh of your broken heart bleed out songs of His sovereignty as you see your past dissolve under the incandescent glory of His undying light.

Dear Christian, you were made for this.