How many people do you know live with a spirit of regret because of something they did or didn't do? There are probably more individuals than you realize who face this giant everyday and it's scar on them seems to never heal. Whether it involved a bad decision on their part or a failure to react to a situation that harmed them in the long run really doesn't matter. It's just the what could have been's that haunt them over and over. Sometimes those memories seem to never go away but are constantly binding and crippling them from what God wants to do with their future.
We all make bad choices from time to time. I think even in the ministry we make them because we're more human than we want to admit. Promotion for those in ministry is often an ego thing. It becomes more about numbers and increases than about God's will. Ego does get in the way of God's will at time and influences our decisions about positions more than we want to admit. When we think that we have all the answers is when we usually end up in trouble regretting decisions that we have made. There are many times that I regret making some choices that I did while pastoring or even physically moving from one church to another. My dad always told me there were good people and bad people in all places and he was right. I found out the grass isn't always greener because of promotion. Most often it's because the septic tank is bigger in that location.
I wish I could go back and undo some of the decisions I regret until this day, but I can't. I wish that I would have taken some situations more seriously and stopped them before they infected me with that feeling of regret. I also wish that some situations I had not taken so seriously and allowed them to affect my health as I did. What I've learned is that hindsight is a whole lot better than foresight. We hope that some things will just go away or that some people that have hurt us will change, but it usually doesn't happen that way and we have to get involved. That's when we make choices that either make us or break us.
I'm sure Moses regretted not being able to go into the Promised Land because of one moment of bad judgement. I'm sure David regretted his failure with Bathsheba. I'm sure Peter regretted his denial of knowing Jesus. But all of these men were just that-men. They were not perfect but flawed like all of us. God took them just as they were when they submitted themselves to Him. The Bible says that Moses did make mistakes as did David and Peter. Yet they were just individuals who made good and bad choices and had to live with them just like we do.
Our challenge today is not to live a life filled with regret. I know that I personally made some bad choices and decisions that I can't do anything about today because they are in the past. I have to decide whether or not they haunt me or I conquer them. I either win or lose my future because of this battle with regret. If I let those bad decisions, bad people, or bad situations win, then regret rides me to my grave. But if I accept that God is forgiving and everything happens for a reason I am a winner.
I choose the latter. Which one will you choose?
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