“For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death.” (2 Corinthians 7:10 NLT)
What’s your greatest regret? For me it seems the older I get the higher my mountain of regrets. And the irony is, my greatest regrets aren’t because of what I did, but because of what I didn’t do. Yes, of course I have regrets for many things I did wrong, but the consequences of those were usually obvious to everyone. What eats at me are the things I didn’t do, that I knew I should have done, but made excuses for myself until it was too late to do anything about them; the things nobody knew about but me…and God!
Consequences of getting caught are often the world’s prompters behind someone seeking forgiveness or for trying to make things right. But even as believers we too often dabble in sin, convincing ourselves: “I’m not hurting anyone, so why not?” The affair that’s discovered; getting caught looking at porn; cheating on taxes; lying to the boss, spouse, kids, etc.
Satan is a liar. Just as God doesn’t have the capacity to lie, Satan doesn’t have the ability to NOT lie! And where does Satan most often propagate his lies? In our heart and mind! What we think about comes about, so if Satan can get us thinking: “You deserve this new car, new house, new job, new spouse, new ___________,” (and you can fill in the blank), we can roll those thoughts over and over in our mind until it makes perfect sense to us.
With little or no thought of consequences, we free ourselves to follow the enemy’s path to destruction. The “I’m not hurting anyone” becomes, “Oh, God, what have I done?” From there regrets begin to pile up and, if we let them, they will destroy us, eating us alive from the inside out, pushing us ever further from the only One who can heal and help us.
That’s not God’s plan and He has a solution that is the path back to wholeness. It’s called repentance. Repentance means to turn away or turn around. It’s a military term that paints the picture of a soldier making an about face. He’s walking in one direction but turns around and begins marching in the opposite direction.
The picture for us is we’re walking away from God, following the dictates of our sinful desires, but the Holy Spirit puts our heart in check, showing us the error of our ways, prompting us to turn from our sin and turn back to God. He enables us to see our sin and bear the negative emotions that are aroused, but He further gives us strength and insight to see that God will forgive and restore us.
I won’t lie to you, I still wrestle with regret for things I can’t change, but every second I allow the devil to tempt me to look back at what I can’t change, it prevents me from looking forward to the things I can. Worldly sorrow that lacks repentance never leads to salvation, thus, “results in spiritual death.” The only path to salvation and new life in Christ; to freedom from the hamster wheel of regret, shame, and anger over what we have no capacity to change, is repentance.
The Lord will never coerce or seek to force you to come to Him. That’s the beauty of salvation in Christ alone by faith alone – He’s the initiator since He laid down His sinless life in our place. But He’s a gentleman and will never make us do anything against our will. He patiently waits for us to come to Him, then when we do, He releases the resources of heaven to cleanse, fill, empower, and enable us to be all He intended for us to be from before the foundation of the world. There’s no regret in His wonderful forgiveness. Come to Him today! Click on this link if you need guidance in knowing how to do that: The Bridge to God.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 