Our theme for this month: “Mistakes”
Our Bible verse for today: “Looking all around and seeing no one, he struck the Egyptian dead and hid him in the sand.” Exodus 2:12 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Our mistakes are not hidden from God.”
Moses thought he was being clever. Maybe he thought he had committed the perfect crime. He killed a man who he thought deserved to be killed, buried the body in the sand, and thought nobody knew about it. He was wrong. God knew. And as it turned out, so did others. He discovered that the next day when, apparently emboldened by his act of the previous day, Sheriff Moses attempts to bring a little law and order into the lives of the Hebrews – but they were having none of it. They let Moses know that they were fully aware of the crime he had committed the day before and that they had no intention of submitting to his authority. Scared now, Moses fled.
What we learn from Moses’ example is that our sins are never really committed in secret. Even if we think nobody else is aware of them, God is. And usually the sins will eventually become known to others as well.
But the good news is that God can and will forgive us. Again we see this in the life of Moses. If we follow his story through Exodus, we find that his big mistake chapter two was followed by forty years of isolation in the desert. It was during that time that God engaged in a little character formation with Moses. He had lots of time to think about the mistakes he had made and what he needed to do differently in the future. God used this time to mature him, and to sand off some of the rough spots of his personality, as well as bringing him to the point where he could eventually be used by God in a major way.
The same is true for us. Our mistakes are seldom fatal. As bad as they may seem at the moment of commission (and in the immediate aftermath), there is little in life that cannot be recovered from. Repent, submit to God, remain faithful over the long-term, let the weeks turn into months and the months turn into years, and watch how God uses your mistakes to correct you, change you, and mold you into a better person – the person He wants you to be.
It’s true that our mistakes are never hidden from God and that they will usually, eventually, become obvious to others as well. But the good news is that God can and will use those mistakes to transform us into a better person if we allow Him to.
God Bless,
Oak Hill Baptist Church 