From: God’s Empowering Presence Episode 11
Question:
What are your thoughts on when you know that God has put it in your heart to do something and you don’t for whatever reason, the opportunity passes by, and you know you have been disobedient.
I know God is forgiving and that his grace is sufficient, but what about the alignment? I know not to take advantage of his goodness being disobedient because he will just forgive me, but where do we go from there? Begin again and hope to do better the next time he tells us to do something?
Is [God] less willing to want to use you because you’re shown that you aren’t reliable?... My desire is to be aligned and to be used, but just wondering what if anything should be done with these past assignments I felt that I had been given and failed to do.
Graham:
If we were to assume that God is a human being then we would expect Him to have the same behaviors as the world around us, and none of us would ever feel safe with Him whilst we were learning to be made in His image.
Lack of Alignment will never cancel out His Forgiveness and Grace. We are in Christ learning to be Christlike. It's a process. Every process allows for improper learning, mistakes and missed opportunities.
The God of Absolute Goodness is also the One of complete and utter faithfulness to Christ in us. If His Covenant is with Christ as the Savior in the process of salvation; then it must also be with Christ as Redeemer in the process of sanctification. We get saved once, we are redeemed every day.
The God Who never leaves us is The One who could never forsake us. The beauty of repentance is that you know He will give you another opportunity up to minimum number of 70x7; but then He expects us to show the same forgiveness and mercy to others.
Eph 2:10; 1:5; Philip 2:13; 2 Cor 3:4-5; Heb 13: 20-21