Bad Decisions and Bad People

Note: This post will refer to Psalm 139.  I just did a check I have written about that passage quite a bit.  There is a reason for that.  Psalm 139 is key, in my estimation, for our survival through hard times and the hard people that tend to accompany those difficulties.  I skimmed through what I have written before, there will be a list of posts that expand or support this one at the end.

Are there things that you have done or that have happened in your life about which you are ashamed or wish you could change?  Are there people in your life that, if you had a magic wand, they wouldn’t be?

I had back to back conversations today that reminded me that, though I do not like it very much, God uses my bad decisions and people of which I am less than fond for his purposes in my life.  David wrote about this.

Look at Psalm 139:1 – 6, focus on verse 3.  God scrutinizes my path and lying down.  He analyzes our path as closely as a civil engineer would use a nested sieve to analyze aggregate in a concrete mix.  He knows all of our bad decisions before we make them.  He knows all of the “bad” people with which we will need to deal.  In fact He uses those bad decisions and bad people to form us for His purposes.  Remember Romans 8:28 and David and Bathsheba.  Not David’s finest hour.  But from his failure, Psalm 51.

We can either brood and regret the bad decisions or do the 1 John 1:9 thing and confess them and be cleansed.  Then we might ask the Lord to help us learn from those mistakes.

The bad people?  The fact that they are in our life did not sneak up on God.  He knew.  He put them there.  Intentionally.  He did that to prepare us for His purposes.  Might want to ask Him why.  Might want to pray for those whom He has intentionally placed in our life.

The list I promised:

• Examined
• Press On
• Dealing with the Uncertain
• Personal Trainer
• Rough Patches
• Release  
• The Real Trainer  
• Frustrated with the Limits
• Angry with God