Despite all we do, God never gives up on us.

Angus Buchan, in the book Faith Like Potatoes, was sharing about Jesus with one of his farmhands. “God is no respecter of persons. It doesn’t matter about your past and what has happened in your life. What is important is your personal walk with God.”

He then quotes Romans 8:28 emphasizing the fact that it is God’s job, not ours, to work all things out for the good. Yet how do we respond when our past failures are thrown in our face? Or, when our current ones are magnified?

Pull these triggers to take our drugs of choice (aka sin) because they make us smell good when we just stepped in something that stinks really bad.

What should we do instead? Throw up our hands and quit. What?? Quit listening to the shame of the past. Quit focusing on the present stink of failure. Quit pulling that trigger.

How? Put up your shield of faith in the truth of Romans 8:2 and say, “I quit!” Think about it. What part of “all things” doesn’t include your past failures or current missteps? And whose job is it to make all those things turn out for good anyway? God and God alone.

This is not a license to sin; but the power to stop repeating the same sin over and over again. If we focus on the past or present failure, which will trigger us, we’ll more than likely sin again in the present.

Yet, do you realize that when you spend time beating yourself up or wallowing in the stink, you are still focusing on you? Quit it! Quit thinking life is all about you. Quit thinking that you’re letting God down, which you can’t because that would make you more powerful than God, which you are not.

Quit doing you and let God do God. Only He can take the entirety of our lives and turn them out for good, which brings glory to Him, which means others see Jesus in us.

Quit trying to do God. The Father is much better at it.