I say this all the time. God wastes nothing. He does not waste our sorrows. He does not waste our wounds…and He does not even waste our failures. In my own life, I have had to realize that He took even my most shameful failures and used them for my own good and for His own glory. Now it seems I am being taken to a whole new level in this realization as I battle Parkinson’s Disease…but our God is able to take the situations and circumstances of our lives - even the painful ones - and make something beautiful of them.I’d like to tell you a brief story about 2 of my friends whom God used to reveal a greater depth of that God kind of love to my own life…but first, I need to share the lyrics of a song called Beyond Compare.
Beyond Compare
WORDS & MUSIC
Dennis Jernigan
September 17, 1986
Verse
You are so good in Your mercy
Taking what I cannot bear
Taking a heart life that seemed hopeless
And making it beautiful beyond compare
Chorus
And what the locusts have eaten
My Lord can restore
And what the enemy’s taken
My Lord gives me more
And my Father will mend my heart
When my heart’s torn
There’s nothing that my Father cannot restore
Verse
You are so good in Your mercy
You take all I don’t understand
Taking a heart that was wounded and broken
And bearing me up by Your hand
Chorus
And what the locusts have eaten
My Lord can restore
And what the enemy’s taken
My Lord gives me more
And my Father will mend my heart
When my heart’s torn
There’s nothing that my Father cannot restore
Verse
You are so good in Your mercy
Taking what I cannot bear
Taking a heart life that seemed hopeless
And making it beautiful beyond compare
This song is for my friends, Paul and Debby. God brought them into my life after much persistence on Paul’s part, asking and asking for me to come to minister to their church body in west Texas. Once we did, they endeared themselves to Melinda and me very quickly and we became fast friends. Paul and Debby had both been married before they met each other. Through a series of events, their marriages ended and they met. Believing they were following God’s will, they married.
Subsequently, they encountered the wrath of many in the Body of Christ who condemned them for not seeking reconciliation in their previous relationships. Much damage was done and they were emotionally ravaged by the so called ‘love’ the church ‘blessed’ them with. What most people failed to do was to dig deeper into the truth of what both had experienced.
Both desired their previous marriages to work, yet both experienced abusive behavior from their spouses and had to protect themselves by removing themselves from those hurtful relationships. In leaving those relationships, they found renewed hope and life in Jesus…and found each other in the process.
I believe marriage is sacred and that reconciliation should always be pursued…and so do my friends. God hates divorce and so do I. Yet divorce happens…and the church must deal with it redemptively. Nothing surprises God…and He is big enough to handle the biggest messes of our lives…if we let Him.
After Paul and Debby were married, they were confronted with the truth in a harsh way, yet they both allowed the Holy Spirit to cleanse them of sin on their parts, and both received God’s forgiveness. They could not take back what they thought – in their honest sincerity before the Lord – was the right thing to do in marrying.
God is Redeemer, though, and had chosen to bless this union in many ways. Yet the Body of Christ could not seem to meet them in the reality of their situation. This song came as an affirmation of their value to God, and that He could restore even the biggest messes we get ourselves into and bring about an even greater dependence upon Him than before – and a greater testimony than we ever thought possible. Our Father is the God of Redemption. Shouldn’t His children act like their Father?
When I saw how the body of Christ treated them and how wounded Paul and Debby were…how they felt the enemy had won on my fronts in their lives…like a swarm of locusts had suddenly swarmed in and devoured something precious to Father God, those thoughts led me to this passage in Joel 2: 21-25 NASB:
21 Do not fear, O land, rejoice and be glad,
For the LORD has done great things.
22 Do not fear, beasts of the field,
For the pastures of the wilderness have turned green,
For the tree has borne its fruit,
The fig tree and the vine have yielded in full.
23 So rejoice, O sons of Zion,
And be glad in the LORD your God;
For He has given you the early rain for [your] vindication. And He has poured down for you the rain,
The early and latter rain as before.
24 The threshing floors will be full of grain,
And the vats will overflow with the new wine and oil.
25 "Then I will make up to you for the years
That the swarming locust has eaten,
The creeping locust, the stripping locust and the gnawing locust,
My great army which I sent among you.
This song is for all you out there who thought they were broken beyond repair…for all those who feel their lives have been eaten away by the lies of the enemy…for those who need the ash-heaps of their lives to be restored and made beautiful. Here’s wonderful news: if you are breathing, there is hope. Believe it and then receive it…as often as necessary!
[Eph 1:18-23 NASB] 18 [I pray that] the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. [These are] in accordance with the working of the strength of His might 20 which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly [places,] 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
Can Jesus redeem any situation? Either He can or He can’t. Redemption may not look like what you think it should. God’s redemption is always better than what was taken from us…as we learn to see our lives from His point of view. I believe He can and will redeem any situation if we will simply surrender those situations to Him.
His love can reach as far as we can fall. He restores us by blessing us with even greater blessings than we might have experienced had we not gone through our particular situations. We wastes nothing…not even the parts of our lives sin has eaten away. In your brokenness, turn to Him and allow Him to restore what the locusts have eaten in your life…and live an abundant life from God’s point of view that truly is beyond compare.
Dennis Jernigan
To listen to the song and teaching on Beyond Compare, listen to The Dennis Jernigan Podcast at http://podcast.dennisjernigan.com/e/beyond-compare/
Picture courtesy of https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2014/12/17/22/36/piano-571968__480.jpg