Troublesome Topic: Satan Uses Our Failures Against Us

Lesson 1 of 4

Satan uses our past against us; God prepares a future for us.

Jeremiah 29:11 is a beautiful picture of the future God has in mind for His children.

The context is that most of the southern kingdom (the tribes of Judah, and Simeon, most of the Levites and about half of Benjamin) have been taken captive to Babylon. In the verse just prior to this one God has communicated through Jeremiah that He would bring them back to their homeland after 70 years.

Jeremiah 29:11

Translation

For I know the plans I plan

for you, says YHVH (read Adonai), plans for peace

and not for evil, [plans] to give you a future and a hope.

Paraphrase

I know the plans I have planned just for you, says THE ETERNAL AND PERSONAL GOD, they are plans for wholeness and well-being, not for evil, plans to give you a future filled with hope.

So even when it seems like there is no hope for the future, even we can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel, remember that God has a plan and He has our best interest in mind. That does not mean following His plan will be easy, but it does mean that following His plan will be our best option.

Satan uses our past to beat on us; God uses our past to teach us (see Heb 5:14).

Satan uses past failures to make us feel worse about the present; God uses ALL our past to make us better for the future.

God does not hold our failures against us; We are the ones that won’t let go.

If you’ve done wrong, repent and give those things to God who will wash them away.

Satan talks and talks; God prefers silent action.

Satan intimidates us with loud words; God demonstrates how He feels with quiet actions.

God tells us He loves us, but He also shows us. In fact He prefers to communicate with His actions because there is no way to argue against action. God showed us how much He values us, how much He cares about us, when He loved us with a cross! No words could be as convincing, and no words can wipe that demonstration of love away.

Satan is constantly giving us messages he wants us to believe. But there is one message you can always trust—the message of the cross. That message tells us that we are valuable to God. It tells us that He was willing to pay any price to restore us to a right relationship with Him. It tells us how much He loves us.

Romans 5:6-8 proves that point:

For at the time when we were frail and barely surviving,

at the right moment, Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, it is rare for someone to die for a righteous man, although it is possible for someone to be bold enough to die on behalf of a man of integrity, however, God proves

His own love for us in that, while still being sinners, Christ died for us.

We often forget that Satan wants us to focus on everything except on Christ’s death.

We need to learn to release our problems to God, release our self-doubts to Him, release our failures to Him, and release our future to Him.

Forget about Allstate insurance, we know we are in “good hands” when we trust ourselves to a God who would prove His love for us by dying for us.

The next lesson is The Role of Guilt

Footnotes

1

Two forms of the same word are used here. The phrase can mean “the thoughts I think,” “the plans I plan,” or “the purpose I have purposed” for you.

2

Peace is much more than the absence of violence; the Hebrew word meant “wholeness, wellbeing, peaceful relationships, rightness.”

3

The Hebrew text puts “a future” before “a hope.” Therefore it appears to be pointing to a future that is characterized by hope. This was stated when they were captive in a foreign land, with no land, no freedom, no hope for a meaningful future.

4

Heb 5:14 includes the words: who by constant use have trained the senses for distinguishing both good and evil.

5: “Frail and barely surviving”

The Greek word is often translated “weak, or without strength,” but it can carry a stronger meaning than that and, in this context, the stronger meaning is desirable. It implies a frailty or sickliness due to not getting adequate nourishment; it is a picture of someone wasting away on their deathbed.

6: “proves”

Two Greek words are combined to make this verb, one is the preposition “together, with, united,” and the other is the verb “to stand.” Thus it means “to stand together,” and was often used of facts that were brought together to “prove” a case or an argument.