A Warning: God Will Let You Have Your Own Way

I hope you love the products and resources I recommend here at A Little R & R. Just so you know, it is possible that I get a commission and collect income from the links on this page. Click here for more info.

I have heard some of our top Christian leaders claim that God wouldn’t allow them to make a wrong decision that would result in long-term consequences.

This is a false statement.

Nowhere in the Bible do we see God stretching out His hand to stop mankind from making wrong decisions.

Even for His chosen people.

Rather, we see repeatedly that when God’s people were intent on making a wrong decision, God would warn them.

He used people and situations to warn them of judgment if they persisted in their sins.

God has not changed.

We have been given free will to choose whether we will obey His Word or go our own way, and our salvation doesn’t take away that free will.

Just because we follow Christ – or even have a big ministry – does not mean that God will preserve us from really bad decisions that may impact the rest of our life or even the lives of our children and grandchildren.

We see this clearly in the book of Jeremiah.

As we come to the end of our study through the book of Jeremiah, we have witnessed God call His people to repentance for a final time – promising to preserve them from His judgment, if they will only turn to Him.

But they refused to listen.

For decades, God’s people had chosen idolatry over true worship, immorality over righteousness, corruption over justice, oppression over freedom — and they’d blown through every opportunity God gave them to repent and turn from their ways…

And then God said

ENOUGH!

The unthinkable happened.

The temple was raided and defiled. Jerusalem was destroyed. God’s people were taken captive.

God let His people have their own way — and the result of that was utter destruction.

Dear sister, we need to heed the warning of Scripture. When we insist on having our own way, God will sometimes give it to us.

And when He does, it is never good.

It is so costly that it might literally cost you everything, just like it cost the people of Judah everything.

And God wasn’t just going to let them get away with a small, little captivity — and then bring them home and hope they learned their lesson.

No, He told them to get comfortable there in Babylon, because most of them would die there.

They would spend 70 years in captivity – only the littlest of children would return to Jerusalem to see it rebuilt.

But there is good news.

While God allowed the children of Israel to blow through every opportunity to repent and turn from their sin…

And while He allowed them to run right into destruction and captivity…

He already had a plan for redemption and restoration ready and waiting for them when the time of punishment was over.

For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

Psalm 30:5

The choice is up to you.

You see, God’s favor comes with true repentance and turning from sin.

God’s people did repent and they did turn from sin and He brought them back. This is the story we read in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

He spared them from utter destruction in the Book of Esther.

Finally, He sent His Son as the ultimate salvation from sin and eternal destruction, but this salvation comes with a requirement.

God’s salvation requires that we make Him the Lord of our lives.

That we stop insisting on our own way. That we stop chasing after what we want. That we give Him the final word in our lives.

You see, being under lordship means we don’t have the final say in our lives.

It means we live under the dictates of someone greater, someone higher; and that someone is Almighty God.

The great news is that He has promised, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:11-13

You see when we choose to give up the right to have the last word in our lives, and we follow God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, He will give us a future and hope!

While the plans we have for our lives may be different than the plans He has, we can rest assured that His plans are perfect.

And the closer we walk with Christ, and the more we submit our will to His, we will truly begin to desire His will for our lives more than our own will.

Dear sister, I pray that you heed this very sober warning.

If you are following after your own will, knowing that God’s Word calls it sin, I pray that you will stop and repent and turn from your own will.

If you are living in the consequences of following your own will, I pray that you will repent and then allow God to bring beauty from ashes.

God desires great things for us, but He can only carry out those wonderful plans when live in submission to His Word and His will.