Last summer I traveled as a team member on the Cola Clash. Early in the summer, we stopped in Winchester, Ohio. The church was in the middle of town surrounded by gravel and asphalt. This meant that we could not do the evangelistic rallies on location as normal. Instead, the church rented a small building beside the large convention center by the highway, just outside of town.

The story of the convention centre was interesting when I first heard it. Apparently it had not been designed as a convention centre, but as a massive church building. A local pastor sensed the Lord leading him to build a large building. He believed if they built it, the people would come. He had enough charisma to convince his congregation to break ground. The foundation was poured, the walls erected, a roof placed, and then the money ran out. They were forced to sell the building and the pastor moved on.

I tell this story, not to mock or to make light of the situation. Not knowing much about the pastor I simply take him as a sincere and passionate individual, someone who believed in the mission, but took a misstep.

The reality is that all of us will make mistakes. Sometimes in the loud commotion of life we will not hear God’s voice. Sometimes we will hear another voice. This voice can come in the form of our own thoughts or even sometimes the voice of the devil. If we make the mistake of listening to these deceptive voices, the result will not likely be on the same disastrous level as the convention centre mentioned above. More likely it will come in the form of the silence of a saddened heart, a sincere yet failed attempt at ministry, a bad sermon, a disastrous meeting, a failed proposition.

It is in these times that our faith is tested. The human reaction is too often just that, a reaction.We have the tendency of reacting wrongly—of overreacting when things don’t go as we thought they should.

Too often when we are deceived, we maintain the belief that God spoke even after things go bad and counsellors tell us to move on. We take our human thinking and blend it with God’s perfect Word and think that somehow these two things are same. Instead of owning up to our mistake we place the blame on God, calling Him a deceiver when in reality it was Satan or ourselves.

Often in these times of sadness we do not run to our Heavenly Father for comfort. Instead we run away from God into the barren wilderness of bitterness and disbelief. In such a departure, some make a great show, shaking their fist at heaven, blaming God first for their failure, and then for the painful results of every sinful mistake they make thereafter. In this, they forget that God has not moved; they have.

Here is the point. No matter what spiritual misstep or blunder you may have made, God has not changed! His word has not changed! No matter what happens the right reaction is to run, not away from Him, but towards Him for comfort and peace and to find in His unchanging truth “a home in the heaven of rest”.