God wants you and me to have "remarkable success," even if we have some things in our past that we are not especially proud of.

There is a man in the Bible who had remarkable success despite a very shaky start. God has chosen to use what happened in his life to help us understand what opens the kingdom of Heaven—God's grace and personal favor—over us. Our own faith will be strengthened as we look at the example of this one man, his response to stress, God's response to this man, and the favor of the Lord that followed him. The man in question is none other than Judah (Gen. 38:1-26).

Judah experienced stress from both family and business—nothing unusual to any of us who spend our time and energy in the marketplace. Yet for some reason, things just went from bad to worse for him, with no end seemingly in sight.

He was certainly not without fault. He deceived and misled his daughter-in-law (who was his eldest son's widow) by failing to keep his promise and allowed his third son to marry her. By doing that, he effectively cut away the source of help and provision that she was entitled to as a widow.

Then Judah became physically intimate with his own widowed daughter-in-law, mistaking her for a prostitute. Without knowing her true identity, he gave her his personal seal, cord and walking staff as proof of his ability to remunerate her. As a result of their liaison, Judah's daughter-in-law became pregnant with his child, and upon revealing her condition before the man and his family, he condemned her to death. Under these dramatic circumstances, his daughter-in-law presented her defense by producing his very own seal, cord and staff, displaying Judah's own glaring guilt for all to see.

He could have easily denied everything and brought her to court. As a businessman, he could have hired a top lawyer, rake up some dirt on her, fabricate an alibi, or even pay some witnesses to commit perjury in order to get himself out of the fix.

But Judah did none of these things. Despite the overwhelming stress he was under, he did one important thing that caught the attention of heaven. He humbled himself before those who were with him, admitting his fault and making restitution for sins. With that response, Judah was able to step into his calling, in spite of all the sins he had committed, and walk in the way that God had ordained for him.

It is an everlasting promise of God and His character to exalt the humble. Judah exhibited humility when he consented to let all righteousness be fulfilled in his own life. Therefore, in spite of the many failures earlier on in his life, Judah's repentance touched God's heart.

The short-term fallout on a social and business level may have been severe for Judah, but the Lord was working on the far more important long-term outcome. Judah went on to receive one of the greatest honors that ever came upon a human being. God blessed Judah abundantly by including him as an ancestor of Jesus Christ (Matt. 1:2-3, Luke 3:33-34)!