Make Your Mess God’s Masterpiece: Six Ways to Keep Moving Forward

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For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:10

Negative regret can suffocate and injure your life, sometimes seemly beyond repair. A regret is a powerful tool in the hands of the enemy. He uses it to stifle our potential and infect our hopes with unhealthy pain. Satan is the author of confusion, condemnation, and shame!

He wants us to see ourselves as less. But God calls us to see ourselves as more – more than able and more than conquerors because of Him.

You are remarkable! Do you believe you are a beautiful mosaic? Do you believe God is pulling the pieces of you together to make His very special masterpiece?

Philippians 3:13 reminds us to lean into the truth: “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.”

As a Spirit-filled believer, a continual exercise that fosters freedom in your life is: Forget and Forget completely! Let your heart feel the truth of God’s words in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

God not only forgives, but He is faithful to do so, and with that freedom, He also will purify us into His goodness and grace. Regret, confusion, condemnation and shame don’t have to be a part of your story! But you must step into God’s truth for your life and out of the lies for this to be possible.

Hope comes in the pressing. Keep pressing forward as The Remarkable Woman! Through the obstacles, keep pressing! Move quickly and energetically toward the mark in your relationship with God and the hope you have in Him. Positive regret can give you space to consider what you could have done differently and with wisdom, use that experience to propel you forward in the future.

Just as a chain is limited by the strength of its weakest link, our success is limited by the quality of our worst decisions. Handling your mistake by seeing them as God’s masterpiece is a powerful way to successfully experience your BEST Remarkable Life.

Look upward and forward; God wants to turn your mess into a masterpiece. To keep you from looking backward and moving forward consider these six practical things you can do:

1. Set aside some time once a week to evaluate your life and choices you’ve made. Have a specific time each week that you use as your Look Back Day and examine your week. (Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you and illuminate your mind.)

• Schedule it into your week just like anything else of high importance.
• Make a date with yourself.
• Connect with what worked, what didn’t, and ask yourself why.

2. Look back at all the important events from your week. For example, review important interactions and decisions you needed to make during the week.
Reflect on your interactions with your family and the decisions you made related to them. How did you handle your kids? Did you have positive interactions with your husband/ partner? Do you have healthy communications with your parents, siblings, other relatives?

• Think about your financial decisions. Review your spending and how you managed with paying your bills. Investing decisions can be included too.
• What happened at work? How was your presentation? Did you hire or fire someone? Are you feuding with someone? Were you ever late for work? Did your boss yell at you?
• Examine your health. Did you eat nutritiously this week? Did you sleep well? Did you get enough exercise? Did you have quality time to nourish your spiritual life as well?
• Include anything else that seems important. Contemplate everything that’s important to you, including anything that involves your friends and neighbors.

3. Evaluate: Ask yourself what you could have done better. Where did you make mistakes? Go back over your entire week and consider how each situation could have been managed more effectively. Travel back in time:

• What would you do if you could go back in time and live that experience all over again
• The odds are that you’ll have the opportunity to experience a similar situation in the future. Most of our lives are filled with routines and habits. There’s not a lot of novelty from week to week.

4. Examine your behavior. Look for trends and patterns in your behavior. We’re all prone to making similar mistakes again and again. Even in completely different situations, we tend to make the same sorts of mistakes.

• Are you assuming too much? Are you too impatient? Are you inconsiderate? Are you acting without getting enough information? Are you ignoring your family?
  Remember: If you can correct a trend in your decision-making, you can eliminate a lot of future errors.

5. Visualize yourself handling the situation in a more effective manner. Plan for challenging situations and try to find solutions to them. Then, see yourself in the same situation, only this time determine to take a new approach. Visualize things working out well.

• This step is super powerful, so avoid skipping it. A few minutes can make a huge difference. As a woman thinketh, so she is!

6. Celebrate: Think about what you did well, too! Recognize those things and resolve to continue responding in the same way to those situations. Keep the good stuff and change the bad. Your success in life will be enhanced by leaps and bounds if you simply take the time to eliminate your mistakes. Each week, you’ll become more and more effective as you make fewer and fewer mistakes.

Success isn’t all about doing spectacular things. It’s just as much about not making spectacular blunders. Your mistakes can become a Masterpiece when you recognize ways that God uses them to help you design your BEST Remarkable Life as you live and lead it well! Keep Designing. God, the Master Designer, is making something Remarkable out of your life.

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