No Regerts Week 1

Are you being honest with yourself? Really...

Intro:

Introduce yourself, talk about how awesome FKO was.

Story about Roller Coaster regret.

Set Up series

The series is called No Regerts and it is all about how to live life with fewer regrets. It is based off a book called Better Decisions fewer Regrets.

Proverbs 27:12 “The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.”

There are 5 questions we are going to ask you over the next few weeks that will help you make better decisions in life.

Tension:

Ps5 story and shoe cleaner story

Okay yes, everyone in this room is wondering WHY and HOW in the world would you ever do this Joel. It is so dumb. Those are easily questions you could have. They are very valid too. Looking back I ask the same questions.

But it all boils down to one answer for you. That is, I Deceived myself. I convinced myself that I NEEDED more gaming systems.

The easiest person to deceive is the person in the mirror.

It’s true. I guarantee if we all look back on our life we will find a stupid decision, or a regret, or a failure, or a mistake we made that we knew probably wasn’t right at first then convinced ourselves otherwise.

Thats kind of how this culture can be. Have you ever heard of it’s my truth? Or live your truth? These statements get thrown around, like truth is something we can convince or decide for ourselves. But that couldn’t be FURTHER from the truth. It is all deriving from the fact that it is very easy to deceive yourself.

Why? Because if you don’t then sometimes you have to face the truth and sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes it doesn’t feel too good. So then why can’t we just keep being ignorant and lying to ourselves? Well because

You will NEVER get where you truly need to be until you acknowledge where you ACTUALLY are.

Truth:

So question one as you may already kind fo see where I am going is, what we call the INTEGRITY questions. This question is…

Am I being honest with myself?

Am I being honest with myself… really?

This is a crucial question we HAVE to ask ourselves if we want to live a life making better decisions with fewer regrets.

Deceitful is difficult to detect.

Like I said before it is so easy for us the deceive ourselves, which is why we have to ask this question. If we don’t we are at risk of convincing ourselves we need something that is damaging to us. Almost all bad decisions are made because we deceive ourselves.

Bible story - Jeremiah.

Nebuchadnezzar invaded and had a king collection. He would blind them, and make them walk around chained up for all to see.

Around 600 BC Jeremiah served as a court advisor to a series of Judean kings.

Ancient Judah was the bottom half of the Holy Land. At the time Judah was paying Babylon for help, but turned their loyalty to Egypt.

Nebuchadnezzar layed seige to the city for 3 months.

Kings names JohioAkim, JohoAchen, Zedekiah.

Zedekiah would not listen to advice. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

Jeremiah was thrown into a dry cistern to shut him up.

Nebachudnezzar shows up himself. Only hope was to open the gates.

So there you go. All these kings that Jeremiah tried to help. Kept deceiving themselves and at the end of it all Jeremiah wrote.

Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

So wait. The heart is deceitful which means, we are naturally having deceitful thoughts. That is exactly why we have to be PROACTIVE about asking the question. Because if we don’t our heart will continuously try to deceive us. It also says who can understand it? To be honest, he’s right. On earth who can understand it? I sure can’t. Maybe you’re in the same place. There are things i’ve done, decisions i have made, regrets I have that I look back and say wow, I did not understand WHY I did that.

Mention Jeremiah and how he probably wondered how people did what they did.

But I can tell you in every single situation I can think of that I have experienced this. I wish that I would have asked the question. Am I being honest with myself… really?

Imagine:

I am so glad we know this now. Because imagine how differently we can live our lives if we begin to ask ourselves this question. The regrets we can avoid, the better decisions we can make.

So I want to ask this question as we start to close.

Are you telling yourself the truth or are you selling yourself a regret?

Are you going to be honest with yourself regardless of how it makes you feel? Or are you going to continue to live a life on the wrong trajectory because you can’t face the truth? Some questions you might have to ask may look like this.

Why am I dating this person, really?

Why am I watching bad things, really?

Why am I having sex before marriage, really?

Why am I getting drunk and partying, really?

Why am I gossiping about my friends behind their backs, really?

You deserve better. you deserve the truth. Don’t keep deceiving yourselves. Start living in the truth. It’s not my truth, it’s not your truth. It’s the truth and his name is Jesus and he says the truth will set you free. You want to live in freedom? Start being honest with yourself.

It’s not A truth its THE TRUTH.

Jesus is the truth, and it’s not just about asking yourself, but it’s about filling yourself with the truth.