Do you believe God can and will redeem everything we do? It’s easy to believe God can and will redeem us in a general sense. We believe Jesus has redeemed us from our sin when he took our place on the cross. However, do you believe God can redeem the times we act in deliberate disobedience? Does God even turn our disobedience around for good? This is a question I’ve never thought to ask until this week. 

My Favorite Verse

One of my all time favorite verses is Romans 8:28 (ESV), “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” I often use this verse as proof that no matter what someone is going through, God will turn it around for their good. I’ve seen this promise come true in my own life over and over. This is a truth that I will always believe no matter what. No person will ever be able to convince me that no matter what happens, God will turn it around for my good and his glory. 

My First Lesson

The first time I learned to trust in this truth I was 17 years old. My parents just went through a divorce. Divorce was something I never thought would happen to me or my family. Sure I had friends whose parents were divorced, but we were Christians, and Christians don’t divorce. Period. So when my mom told me she and my dad were divorcing, I felt like my whole world was turned upside down, and I no longer had anything firm to stand on. It was as though I was just floating around with no foundation, nor clear direction. The one truth I knew without a shadow of a doubt is that Jesus was still with me and would guide me. He was all I had in those days. He was the only one I knew I could trust and look to for support. 

During this season God dropped the Romans 8:28 verse into my mind. At the time I had no idea where in the Bible that verse was, but I knew it was in there somewhere. I had heard other Christians quoting that verse in the past, even though I didn’t know where it was located. I found myself repeating that verse in my mind over and over and over throughout each day. Honestly, I didn’t even understand what I was doing. I just knew I was supposed to believe what this verse said. Not to mention quoting the Bible gave me hope in those dark and confusing days. 

Declaration Is Key

What was I doing? I was declaring the promises of God over my life. I was believing what God said is true, even though it didn’t look like it at the time. How could God turn this disaster around for my good and his glory? 

Wrong Identity

As a 17 year old and even in the years to come, I took on the identity of my parent’s failed marriage as my own. When I turned 18, I decided to go to another church, a place where nobody knew about my past. I made sure to never mention that I came from a broken family. I thought if this new group knew the truth, they would reject me. Of course this was a lie. In time I learned that the leader of the college group also came from a home like mine. It was then I started to understand that just as I didn’t hold his parent’s failure against him, neither would anyone hold my parent’s failure against me. 

I also learned that there was hope that I could have a good marriage, despite the breakdown of my family. This man was married, and they had an incredible marriage. I was still scared to ever get married, but the Lord was instilling hope into my soul through this man and his wife. 

The Fruit

Now, it has been 26 years since my parent’s divorce. Today I can see how God made this time of my life to turn out for my good. God did turn this confusing and dark time in my life around for both my good and his glory. You see, because I went through this hardship, I learned that marriage is important. I learned that I needed to be extremely careful of how I approached marriage. I started wondering what the Lord had to say about marriage. 

When I graduated from high school, I was given a Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. I opened up that giant book and started looking up every single verse in the Bible about marriage, divorce, husband, wife, and anything else I could think of. At the end of this endeavor I had a lot of knowledge about what the Bible said regarding this subject. The thing I was lacking was wisdom to know how to put the scripture into action in my life. I remember praying, “God, I know what you say, but how do I apply this to my life? I need help.” God is always so faithful to answer our prayers, especially prayers asking for his help.

The Answer To My Prayer 

Not long after that prayer the Lord sent a man named Tommy Nelson to our church. He wrote a book called, The Book of Romance. In his book he takes the Biblical book of Song of Solomon and explains it in ways we can understand. Song of Solomon is a Jewish poetry book, and it can be difficult to understand what is really being said. Tommy Nelson starts with who you are attracted to and goes through the different stages of a romantic relationship until death. This was the answer to my prayer. I finally had the wisdom I needed to learn how the Lord wanted me to go about discovering who he wanted me to marry. 

The end result is I completely surrendered this area of my life to the Lord. I told the Lord I wanted him to choose my husband, and I would wait for him to bring my husband into my life. A few years later the Lord did bring my husband into my life. In fact the night I met my husband the Lord told me in almost an audible voice, “You are going to marry him.” 

The Continued Answer To My Prayer

I did marry that guy, and we are about to celebrate our 21st wedding anniversary. I’ve watched as the Lord has made my relationship with my husband to become the best relationship I have. We have learned to support and encourage each other. Over the years we have learned how to have a godly marriage, with our foundation grounded on Jesus. God truly has taken that broken part of my life and turned it around for the best life I could ever have. I sometimes wish I could go to that 17, 18, or 20 year-old girl and tell her to hang in there because God has an amazing life planned out for her! 

Can God Redeem Rebellion?

So back to my original question: Do you believe God can and will redeem everything, even our deliberate disobedience? I would have to say, “Yes!” I say yes and come with an example straight out of the Old Testament. 

Earlier this week I was reading the book of Jonah. You may recall the story. Jonah was told by God to go to Nineveh and deliver a message. Jonah disobeys God’s command and heads in the opposite direction in a boat. A huge storm comes, and it is discovered that Jonah’s disobedience is the cause. Jonah tells the sailors to throw him overboard and the storm will stop. They do and the storm does come to a close. 

The Redemption

Then something I’ve never noticed before happens. We read in Jonah 1:16 (ESV), “Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.” In the New Living Translation it says, “The sailors were awestruck by the Lord’s great power, and they offered him a sacrifice and vowed to serve him.” ‭‭Jonah‬ ‭1‬:‭16‬ ‭(NLT)‬‬

These men, who were pagans, saw the glory and power of the Lord on display. They chose to show the Lord honor by giving him a sacrifice and promising to serve him. 

Even in Jonah’s deliberate disobedience to the Lord, we see that these men were shown who the true God is and chose to serve him. Who knows but that this may have been the only time in their lives they could learn about the one true God. These men’s lives were radically changed because of Jonah, and Jonah wasn’t even supposed to be there! So, yes, God can redeem everything! He can redeem even those times when we purposefully choose to disobey him. Not that we should choose disobedience. I mean Jonah found himself in the belly of a large fish for three days because of his disobedience. I’m sure that wasn’t fun at all! Still, his disobedience was turned around for his good, and God’s glory!