Last week, my friend, Christine Scott, leaned over to me before Biblestudy began and said, “Hey – every time I pray for you, I keep hearing God say, ‘I got your messy.’  I don’t know if that means anything to you, but that’s what I keep hearing and praying.  God’s got your mess and messiness in life, whatever that may be.”

“Who, moi?!” was my first internal response.  Thanks, but no messes to clean up here at the moment.  Doing pretty well for the first time in weeks, to be honest.  I GOT THIS.

Beware of EVER thinking that.  Because it wasn’t just a few hours later that the mess hit the fan.

Mess created from running too fast, going too hard, thinking, “I got this,” while inconsiderately leaving other people in the dust.

The first day after my “messy” was exposed, I was too embarrassed to even talk about it to God.  I was hiding underneath the labels of “Terrible Parent,” “Terrible Friend,” “Terrible Everything” that I had stuck on myself and assumed God agreed with.

But after a few days of hiding underneath the mess and avoiding intimacy with God, I decided to invite Him into the mess.  And instead of a lecture or a talking-to about my overall failures as a human being, what I found was…grace.  God not only had my mess, He was down on all-fours cleaning up the mess on my behalf.

I love FB Meyer’s quote from Love to the Uttermost that says, “Again, He stoops from the throne, and girds Himself with a towel, and in all lowliness, endeavors to remove from thee and me the stain which His love dare not pass over.  He never loses the print of the nail; He never forgets Calvary and the blood; He never spends one hour without stopping to do the most menial work of cleansing filthy souls.  And it is because of this humility He sits on the Throne and wields the scepter over hearts and world.”

I don’t know what your mess looks like today.  It might be a stack of dishes in the sink that have overflowed onto the counter.  Or it might be a house full of kids who need you to deal with their messes of every second of the day.  It might be a marriage that looks more like a train wreck than the picture of peaceful bliss.  Or it might be a ruined friendship or a ruined day or a ruined life that feels frayed around the edges or unraveling at the seams.

But whatever your mess is, not only does God got your mess, God’s got you.  That’s what real grace is for.  It’s for real sinner, not respectable sinners.  It’s for real messes, not just overflowing piles.  So hear God say over you today, “I got this.  I got you.  I got your messy.  That’s what Calvary was for.  And that’s what grace is for.  For each and every mess.  For each and every day.  For each and every life.”

David says it best when in Psalm 32 he writes, “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long…I acknowledged by sin to You, and my iniquity I did not hide; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord; and You forgave the guilt of my sin.  Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to You in a time when You may be found.  Surely in a flood of great waters they shall not reach him.  You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance” (Psalm 32:3, 5-6).  

Confess your mess, receive God’s grace, and hear His songs of deliverance.  Because of Jesus, He’s already got your mess covered, every single time.