The Most Beautiful Disaster: How God Makes Miracles Out of Our Mistakes

by Hope Carpenter

Pain buried alive never dies, and it will manifest somewhere along the way.

We are in charge of our healing, even if we weren’t responsible for causing the damage.

Sarah never ceased to be everything God said she was, even when she was trying to take her servant’s baby as her own.

For so long, I had been trying to tell God what shape to make me, and He had to squash me back down to a lump of clay again so that He could remake me. And when I finally let Him, He didn’t reshape me into what I had been before, but into something that looked and felt more like the me I had been searching for all along.

Messing up does not disqualify us from being loved by and heard by God.

No matter what you’ve done—no matter how badly you’ve screwed up—it does not exclude you from the promises God has made or the role God has called you to.

To experience real change, you’ve got to want freedom more than you want the conveniences and routines of your normal life.

In the years since my private sin was made glaringly public, I’ve been told over and over—in both overt and subtle ways—that I’m no longer worthy of preaching the gospel or being married to such a great man of God. Some people seem to find pleasure in reminding you of your past and trying to dangle it over your head, but God doesn’t.