These are the things I regret:
- Not developing healthy habits early on in my life
- Good bedtimes
- Starting each day with personal devotions
- Ending each day with personal devotions
- Kneeling beside my bed to pray
- Leading my family in devotions
- Leading my family to kneel before the Lord and pray out loud
- Regular exercise routines
- Regular checkbook balancing, specific routines for paying bills, praying for God’s provision
- Healthy eating habits
- Not practicing generosity
- Intentionally giving to other people
- Praying with other people when they expressed their need
- Not being intentional and bold in witnessing
- Sharing the hope of the gospel with others
- Inviting people to church
- Giving away Bibles and tracts
- Not discipling my kids well
- Taking them out weekly to find out about their lives
- Spending time weekly with them doing something they love
- Sharing the Bible with them
- Asking them discipleship, growth, accountability questions
- Studying the Bible with them
- Noticing what matters to them
- Helping them memorize the Word
- Praying regularly for them
- Not nurturing my marriage or cherishing my wife well
- More date nights
- More words of affirmation
- Keep the romance alive
- Listen well and be present in sickness and in health
- Not listening well
- Speaking too much and too quickly
- Thinking too highly of my own thoughts/words/agenda
- Paying too much attention to self and feelings
- Not loving well through sacrificial action
- Not being present
- Being too busy
- Being too distracted
- Believing the lie that there is not enough time
- Thinking that the grass is greener somewhere else
- Not being satisfied, contented with what I have
- Not finding joy in this moment
These are things I regret.
But since I don’t have a time machine, there is no way I can go back and change these things in the past.
I need the courage of the Lord to apologize to the people that these choices affected. I want and need to ask their forgiveness and make them aware that I am sorrowful over the impact of these choices (which were primarily made in selfishness, distraction or hurry, though some were made in ignorance).
I need to put these all under the blood of Jesus, so that He can forgive, cleanse and redeem.
I cannot live in regret, which is basically placing myself under condemnation and walking around with guilt and shame. The Bible says there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So I need to give these to God, trust Him to work the miracles of redemption in each of them and ask the Lord to change my present and future behavior to now address these things.
I don’t want to live with regret. I know that true regret is a form of godly conviction of guilt so that I will confess it to Him and then trust Him to help me repent and walk in the newness of life that He gives me. False regret is nothing more than the accusation and condemnation of Satan, and I must learn to say “Get thee behind me Satan. I have given that to God, it is redeemed by His blood and you have no place here.”
- Do you have true regret as conviction from the Lord? Will you give it to Him and let Him redeem it?
- Do you have false regret as condemnation from Satan? Will you reject those worthless accusations and walk away from the traps of the enemy?
- Do you have new things that God is calling you to say and to do so that in the future you will not have regret? Please, get busy, today doing those things.
What God calls you to, He will equip you to do. Today is a new day. Let us seek to live a life without regret.
Pastor Michael Johnson 