Here is something you should be very glad about: God’s faithfulness to you doesn’t depend on your faithfulness to Him. The Bible says, ‘If we are faithless, He remains faithful.’ Your mistakes may take you out of God’s will, but they will never place you beyond His reach.

Catherine Marshall tells of a great personal struggle she experienced after writing a novel titled Gloria. She began the book in 1969 and abandoned the project two-and-a-half years later. To her, the shelved manuscript was like ‘a death in the family’. Attempting to reconcile her conflicting thoughts and feelings, she spent time at a retreat house. And while there, she reread the Bible story from Numbers about a time when poisonous snakes filled the Israelite camp. The people recognised the snakes as punishment for their sin, and cried out in repentance. The Lord told Moses, ‘Make a [bronze] snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.’ (Numbers 21:8 NIV)

Catherine realised that just as the Israelites took that which had hurt them, lifted it up to God, and were healed, we can take our mistakes and sins, lift them up to God in prayer, and trust Him to heal us. She writes, ‘When any one of us has made a wrong (or even doubtful) turning in our lives through arrogance, lack of trust, impatience, or fear—God will show us a way out.’

Even when you stray, God loves you so much that He will draw you back to Himself again. ‘If we are faithless, He remains faithful.’