We met Jim out in the Lost Creek wilderness of Colorado a few weeks ago.  He still had about half his teeth, but that didn't keep him from smiling to the campground he presided over as the official host.  His weathered face bore the marks of a hard scrabble life in the Colorado mountains.

When I asked Jim about his life, he told me about drying out 13 years earlier.  Since then he'd come to know God.  He turned around his life.  It was as though God said, "I'm not done with you yet."

A lot of us have gone through a season of depression where we felt so estranged from God that we were ready to give up.  The shame of abuse will do that to you.  Commit what feels like the unforgivable sin, and you may find yourself racked with regret on the far side of the universe.

But God sees you very differently. The pain you've absorbed is his investment in you. The prodigal son's father gives us a picture of how God feels about us.  To be human is to mess up.  The Bible is full of flawed people making terrible mistakes.  That is the only raw material God has to work with.

The irony is that it's your mistakes that qualify you for his grace. They are the points of weakness that enable him to show off his strengths. Don't believe the critics - they don't speak for God. He's not done with you yet.

Start by listening to the lyrics of the following song.