Have you ever missed an opportunity and felt like you’ll never get that chance again? I know I have. However, there’s one thing I’ve come to know and that is, it doesn’t matter how many times we fail or how many opportunities we miss, God will never abandon His plan for our lives. He will always bring us back to His plan and purposes. We only need to be ready to seize it.
I can remember a time in my life when I was standing right in front of the answer to my prayers and walked away not realizing that this was what I asked God to do. The opportunity was right there but I missed it. Of course, after the fact I realized what had happened and regret immediately followed. Oh!, if I had only realized my opportunity. But thanks be to God He didn’t let me stay in my regrets.
I began to pray for the Lord to do it again, to put in the right place at the right time but this time to give me the grace to do the right thing. As I prayed and mediated the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, “God will never abandon His plan for your life, if it is in His plan He will bring you to it again.” He reminded me of how Adam missed his opportunity in the Garden of Eden. Adam was in the right place at the right time and could have taken of the tree of life but He missed that opportunity. He missed the chance to live day in and day out in unbroken fellowship in the presence of God for eternity. Genesis 3:22 says, “And the Lord God said, behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” Adam could have lived forever in the Garden of Eden in the presence of God but he missed his opportunity.
As I thought about Adam, I wondered about his regret. I wondered if he’d prayed to God to restore him back to the Garden. I wondered how close he must have lived to the Garden. I wondered if he tried to get back to the Garden on his own. I wondered all these things because that’s what I did and Adam was human just like me. However, as I wondered I saw that God didn’t leave Adam in his regret just like He didn’t leave me in mine. He spoke to Adam just as He had spoken to me. He gave Adam a promise of a seed that would one day come and bruise the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15). God said to Adam what He said to me. He would not abandon His plan. God would bring Adam back to Eden. And when Jesus came to this earth, died on the cross and rose again”, Adam regained that missed opportunity.
Therefore, I want to encourage you today if you’ve been feeling regret about opportunities you’ve missed in your life, don’t. Because God will never abandon His plan for your life. If it is in His plan for you He will bring you back to it again. He is a God of restoration and He will restore all things back to you even missed opportunities.