Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
John 16:20-23 Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth has child pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. In that day you will no longer ask Me anything. Very truly I tell you, My Father will give you whatever you ask in My name.
John 15:16 You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit–fruit that will last–and so that whatever you ask in My name the Father will give you.
John 16:33 “I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Romans 8:29-30 For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.
Ephesians 1:4 For He chose us in Him before the creation the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will–to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves.
Hebrews 11:17-34 (*v. 34) …whose weakness was turned to strength….
We are all born into sin and sinful creatures by nature. We are, in our nature separated from God. At our very best we are only mediocre. Even with all our talents and abilities, we are still limited 
in what we are able to do. We are very limited creatures, confined by our own humanity. The thing that makes us essentially us is what also hinders us. Sometimes it can make you wonder what is really the point of all this?
All throughout the Bible, you see story after story of people were being themselves, unapologetically. They chased after their own desires and were living their lives. David was filled with lust and driven to murder, Rahab was a prostitute, and Paul was a zealous persecutor of the early church’s Christians. At first glance, it seems like there’s no hope for these people. They are too far gone. But that wasn’t the end of their stories. Something happened. God happened. He came in and changed their lives. David ended up being called a man after God’s own heart, Rahab was spared because of her act faith in hiding the spies, and Paul–the very one who persecuted–became an apostle and was entrusted with teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. Their actions committed in their sinful states did not mark the end of their stories. Where sin sought to put a period, God erased and put a “but”.
It’s so easy to feel weighed down by the cares of this world. There are so many things warring with your soul, trying to keep you from connecting with Christ. It’s also easy to feel like your past can keep you from growing, or keep God from loving you and forgiving you–you feel those limitations and like there’s nothing you can do to break free from it. But the seemingly most sinful people are the ones God used greatly. And the way in which He used them can only be traced back to His grace, not their own limited abilities. Knowing exactly who and what we are, God still planned from the very beginning to redeem us, to adopt us, so that our original story ending (death) doesn’t stay that same way. That’s what I love most about this picture to the right: all folks from the Bible, marred with scandalous pasts, that God used mightily. He changed their stories. He changed them.
He changes us in that same way–He takes us, with our sinful cores and fills us with a new core–one not plagued by earthly, human limitations. God gives us a new standard from which we operate so those former limitations become null and void, so that our original sentence of spiritual death is pardoned and we receive the gift of eternal life with God our Father. And then there’s the greatest story ever that makes our eternal lives possible-Jesus Christ’s work on the cross. On that Friday, it appeared that sin was victorious and that the Savior of the world was dead. But as that following Sunday showed us, that was not the end of the story….