Regret and how to deal with it.

Summary: God has given us the ability to feel regret so it will lead us to repent and trust God to make something beautiful and useful out of our lives.

A. One day, Lou Gehrig, the famous New York Yankee first basemen came to the plate with two outs in the 9th inning and the potentially winning runs on 2nd and 3rd bases. 1. The count against Gehrig went to full count – 3 balls and 2 strikes. 2. The pitcher wound up and let the ball go with all he had – the ball was a smoking fastball right over the middle of the plate and Gehrig didn’t swing the bat. 3. The umpire called, “Strike three!” (game over!) 4. Very slowly, Lou Gehrig turned and spoke to the umpire. 5. At this the crowd went wild, because Gehrig never spoke back to the umpire. 6. The reporters swarmed around the umpire asking “What did Lou Gehrig say to you?” 7. The umpire smiled and called for Lou Gehrig to come over. 8. The umpire said, “Lou, tell these men what you said to me when I called that third strike.” 9. Lou replied, “I only said, ‘Mr. Ump, I would give ten dollars to have that one back!’”

B. How many countless billions of people would give ten dollars or ten thousand dollars to get just one minute back in order to change something they said or did, or something they didn’t say or do!

1. That’s what feelings of regret are all about. 2. Today, I want us to explore feelings of regret. C. So, what is regret?

1. Webster’s dictionary defines regret as “sorrow aroused by circumstances beyond one’s control or power to repair.” 2. Regret is sorrow or remorse over something in the past that happened or over something we did that we cannot change or repair. 3. Regret can also be a sense of disappointment over what has not happened, missed opportunities or wasted years. 4. To be human is to have regrets because making mistakes and sinning is a universal experience. 5. The regrets we have can be about big things or they might be about small things, and they can be about what we did or didn’t do.

6. Here are a few examples of possible things we might regret:

a. We might regret having taken a promotion at work or not having taken the promotion. b. We might regret having told that person off, or regret not saying something when we had the chance. c. We might regret having gotten into a relationship with someone, or regret not mustering the courage to ask them out. d. We might regret not paying careful enough attention to what we were doing because we ended up sending a sensitive text or email to the wrong person, or we might regret not paying enough attention while driving and got into an accident. e. Erwin Lutzer tells about a missionary airplane mechanic who got distracted while fixing an airplane and forgot to tighten a bolt, which led to the death of 7 young missionary men. Imagine the regret he felt as he attended the funerals and saw the grief of those seven young widows.

D. Our regrets can be so painful and hard that we don’t appropriately face them and deal with them.

1. There are two opposite responses to our regrets that can both be damaging. 2. On one extreme, we seek to distance ourselves from our regrets.

a. One way to distance ourselves from our regrets is to discard them.

1. First, we might discard them by minimizing them – telling yourself it was no big deal. 2. Second, we might discard them by rationalizing them – everybody is doing it or compared to others I’m not so bad. We lower our standards to fit what we are doing.

b. A second way to distance ourselves from our regrets is to displace them by playing the blame game – we pass the blame and responsibility on to others.

1. It’s not my fault, if they had not done what they did, I wouldn’t have done what I did. 2. We love to accuse others and excuse ourselves. 3. The opposite extreme, is to dwell on our regrets to the point that we allow them to destroy us.

a. We believe that we must be punished for the things we regret, but how much punishment is sufficient? b. In an article Rick Warren wrote for Charisma News, he wrote: “We try to pay for our guilt unconsciously through illness, depression, setting ourselves up for failure and other forms of self-punishment. But the problem with beating yourself up is that your conscience never knows when to stop. Some people spend their entire lives in self-condemnation.”

E. So, how should we handle our feelings of regret?

1. In 1999, Dr Paul Brand and Philip Yancey co-wrote a book called “Pain: the Gift Nobody Wants.” 2. Dr Brand was born in India to missionary parents, and spent most of his life caring for people with leprosy. 3. Dr Brand made great discoveries and developed helpful treatments for leprosy.

a. He was the first physician to understand that leprosy was not a disease of the tissue, but of the nerves. b. It is the loss of sensation of pain which makes sufferers of leprosy susceptible to injury and leads to tissue rotting away, especially in the extremities.

4. Because of the damage to their nerves, lepers live a pain-free life.

a. Many people with chronic pain wish they could live a pain-free life, right? b. But what we don’t realize is that the absence of pain was the greatest enemy of the leper.

5. And so, as the title of the book says, “Pain is the gift that nobody wants.”

a. And so is regret. b. Do you know what we call someone who is incapable of feeling regret? We call them psychopaths! c. Without the ability to feel regret and remorse, there is nothing to lead them to change.

6. God has given us the ability to feel pain for our protection and wellbeing, and God has given us the ability to feel remorse and regret for the same reason.

a. Regret is a gift to our soul, just as pain is a gift to our flesh. b. But regret is designed to serve a temporary purpose. c. God does not intend for us to wallow in it. d. He does not want us to feel it any longer than necessary to deal with the cause and make correction.

F. As we appropriately respond to our feelings of regret, I want to suggest the following three steps.

1. First, I want to encourage us to recognize our regrets.

a. Let’s not discard or avoid our regrets or try to distance ourselves from them. b. Let’s name them and claim them as our own.

2. Second, I want to encourage us to release our regrets to God.

a. This releasing of them includes confessing them, repenting of them (if necessary), and entrusting them into God’s forgiving hands.

3. Then Third, I want to encourage us to allow God to redeem our regrets.

G. The biblical foundation for this three step process is found in what Paul wrote in 2 Cor. 7:10, where Paul wrote: For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly grief produces death.

1. Think about how those truths and those words coming from Paul’s pen, applied to Paul himself.

a. Do you remember what Paul’s testimony about his former life was? By his own account he said that he was a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man (1 Tim. 1:13). b. Paul had dragged Christian men and Christian women from their homes, had them imprisoned, and voted to have them executed. c. At the stoning of Stephen, one of the early church’s most beloved and powerful leaders, Paul stood by giving his approval (Acts 8:1-3).

2. How do you think Paul lived with himself and his conscience?

a. What do you think he did with all the sorrow and regret he must have felt?

3. I believe Paul practiced these three steps.

a. He recognized what he had done and owned it. b. He repented and released those things he regretted into God’s hands. c. Then he allowed God to redeem his regrets – and God used Paul and his testimony in a mighty way.

4. Godly sorrow and grief brings repentance that leads to salvation and no regret.

a. We might paraphrase Paul by saying, “Godly regret leaves no regret.” b. The apparent contradiction resolves itself when we understand that godly regret is a transitional stage. c. It’s godly because it is a means to an end – namely, it leads to repentance – and once that end has been achieved, it leaves no regret.

5. Godly regret had done its job in Paul, and he no longer had any use for it.

a. When he wrote to the Philippians he wrote: Not that I have already reached the goal or am already perfect, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. Therefore, let all of us who are mature think this way. (Phil. 3:12-15)

6. A writer named Barry Cooper wrote: Godly regret is a chrysalis. It enables us to leave behind the wriggling larva of sin, grow the bright wings of repentance, and so fly upwards toward our salvation. It is not meant to be carried with us, but discarded once its purpose has been met.” 7. Of course, Paul was well aware that there is another species of regret - a deadly one.

a. Paul wrote: “But worldly sorrow brings death.” b. Worldly regret “brings death” in that it elicits no repentance, and so leaves our sin to run its natural course unchecked.

8. Barry Cooper continued in his article on regret: “The difference, then, between godly regret and worldly regret is partly one of duration. If your regret keeps you on your knees longer than the time it takes to repent, there is something amiss. Good regret pays a fleeting visit; bad regret, like the thoughtless party guest at 3 a.m., outstays its welcome. Good regret is a doorway; bad regret is a destination. Good regret makes us more preoccupied with Jesus; bad regret makes us more preoccupied with self. Good regret drives us to repentance; bad regret drives us to distraction. Not many butterflies achieve escape velocity if they insist on carrying their previous home with them.”

H. And so our goal in dealing with the emotion of regret is for it to do its job.

1. And it has done its job when it has caused us to recognize our regret, repent and release our regret, and allow God to redeem our regret. 2. Let’s focus on that last step – allowing God to redeem our regret. 3. Consider the regrets that Adam and Eve must have had about eating the forbidden fruit.

a. Surely they struggled with thoughts like: “if only I had not listened to that serpent…if only I had obeyed God’s commandment…if only I had said ‘no’.” b. Their actions had brought sin and death not only upon themselves, but upon all of humanity and creation. c. And there was nothing they could do to repair it.

4. But God could!

a. When Adam and Eve sinned, God didn’t wallow in regret, rather God offered them His solution; His plan of redemption. b. Adam and Eve could not repair their mistake, but God promised that He would. c. He didn’t do it by letting them go back and change the past, rather He did it by changing their futures. d. The serpent who had deceived Eve – Her seed would crush the serpent. e. Adam brought death into the world, but the second Adam would bring eternal life. f. Sin separated man from God, but faith would reunite them. g. God took their mistake and offered to repair it by redeeming it.

I. We can see how God did the same with David and Bathsheba.

1. King David committed adultery with Bathsheba, and then murdered her husband so he could marry her, trying to hide his sin. 2. When God confronted David through Nathan the prophet, David acknowledged his sin and repented, but he could not go back and change the past. 3. When God took the baby conceived in sin away from David and Bathsheba, David could not bring him back. 4. David did not have the power to repair his past, but God did. 5. God took David’s mistakes and sins, forgave them and redeemed them by changing his future. 6. God gave David another son through Bathsheba named Solomon, and through Solomon’s line came Jesus who would redeem the world from sin.

J. The apostle Peter is another great example of someone who allowed God to redeem his regrets.

1. We all know the story of Peter’s denial of Jesus. 2. Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times before the rooster crowed the next day. 3. Peter boasted that that would never happen, that he would die for Jesus if necessary. 4. But then just a few hours later, when confronted on 3 separate occasions, Peter denied being a follower of Jesus or even knowing Jesus, and called down curses on himself for emphasis. 5. Then the rooster crowed and Peter immediately realized what he had done, so he ran out and wept bitterly. 6. Don’t you know that Peter regretted what he had done. 7. Peter must have struggled to believe that God would still want him to witness for Christ after what he had done. 8. But Jesus made it clear that He still wanted Peter to be an apostle – on resurrection Sunday, He sent a message to Peter from the angel through the women at the tomb, then Jesus personally appeared to Peter, and then later by the sea of Galilee there was the three question reinstatement episode to offset Peter’s three denials. 9. The fact that Peter stood up on the Day of Pentecost and preached the first gospel sermon, and then went on to plant and minister to the church until he was put to death for Christ, is a tribute to the fact that Peter allowed God to redeem his regrets. 10. Peter could have allowed his regrets to destroy him, but instead, he allowed God to redeem them.

K. Just like God redeemed the regrets of Adam and Eve, David and Bathsheba, and Paul and Peter, He can redeem ours as well.

1. God does not regret our past, nor does He wish we could go back and change it. 2. God looks at our past and sees how He can redeem it and use it for good in the future. 3. God takes our mistakes and sins and sees how He can take them and shape them into a beautiful testimony of His grace. 4. God takes what we cannot change about our past and uses it to change us and others. 5. We don’t have the power to repair our mistakes, but God does. 6. And here’s the key – we have to allow God to do it. 7. We must surrender ourselves to God – we must surrender our past, present, and future and put it all in God’s hands. 8. In doing so, we stop relying on ourselves and start trusting God to work all things together for good.

L. We don’t have to live with regret.

1. God can turn our mess into something beautiful. 2. Whatever we have done or not done in the past, God can redeem it. 3. Whatever mistakes we have made, God can fix them by employing them. 4. We can quiet our minds by letting go of the past, and by trusting God with the future. 5. The thought, “I wish I could go back and change…” is something that we never have to allow to weigh us down again. 6. When we face regret, we have the same choice to make that faced Adam and Eve, David and Bathsheba, and Paul and Peter, we can let regrets consume and destroy our lives, or we can put them in the hands of God, and allow Him to redeem them.

M. This process of salvation and sanctification that includes recognizing, repenting, and releasing of our sins and regrets is a gift of God’s grace.

1. And as a gift of God’s grace it can’t be earned or deserved, but must be accepted and received. 2. When we receive God’s grace through faith, repentance and baptism, our sins are forgiven and God commissions us to move forward. 3. When Isaiah saw the glory of God and wanted to answer God’s call, he realized he was too sinful and lived among a sinful people.

a. But God took care of that problem, sending an angel with a burning coal from God’s altar to cleanse Isaiah and remove his iniquity. b. Having been forgiven and redeemed through God’s grace, Isaiah answered God’s call.

4. God’s relationship with Israel is a great example of God’s grace and God’s faithfulness to a rebellious and sinful people.

a. Look at what God said to Israel in Isaiah 1:18: “Come, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are crimson red, they will be like wool.” b. And in Isaiah 43 after having received God’s punishment in exile, God promised deliverance and restoration. God said: “Do not remember the past events; pay no attention to things of old. Look, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.” (Is. 43:18-19)

5. And doesn’t that sound a lot like what Paul said in our Scripture Reading for today: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 3:14) 6. We don’t have to dwell on the past and wallow in regret, because God has wiped our slate clean – like when a child shakes their etch-a-sketch. 7. And our God is the God of the second chance who is much more concerned about where we are heading than where we have been. 8. So let’s trust God with our past, present and future. 9. Let’s allow ourselves to feel the emotion of regret and let it lead us right to God, where we can leave our regrets in God’s hands. 10. Tis’ So Sweet To Trust in Jesus…