Over the past several days I've had several conversations with extremely
gifted and wonderful students who are all dealing with some iteration of the
same issue: regrets. Regrets over sin patterns. Regrets over things
they've not done while in college (this is especially true for the seniors).
Regrets over who they are (or aren't) as people--not smart enough/pretty
enough/spiritual enough, etc. etc. And so I've had the great gift of having to think through how the gospel applies to the regrets of our past.
I love this job.
Here's the conclusion that I've come to in working with these great students: if Jesus is Lord over all our lives, then our future is not ours to control, our present is only ours to offer to him...and our past is under his Lordship as well. All of our times are in his hands--future, present, AND past. And so if the past is His, all of it, then it is not ours at all--not even ours to regret.
The Lordship of Jesus frees us from the tyranny of other lords, including the tyranny of regret, and especially the tyranny of our own selves in our own inability to do anything about anything that has happened in the past. We can learn from it. We can repent of things we've done. But the invitation to live with Jesus as Lord is a genuine invitation to live a regret-free life. We are to trust him as recklessly with our past as we are to trust him with our present and our future.
In Revelation Jesus says to John, "Behold, I am making all things new." "..am making" is the present progressive tense. This is not something that might be done in some wishful thinking future. Jesus' redemption of our past is already active and at work. All the days of our lives in the past have either been ordained by him or are being redeemed by him. Our lives are not our own, and this is extremely, extremely good news. We are being held by One who stands outside of time to redeem all of time--including everything that you and I have ever done: good, bad, or indifferent.
That, my friends, is good news.
But here's some bad news, at least for my most loyal readers: I'll be in and
out of the blogosphere for the next couple days. Hopefully I'll get to
touch base at least once before the weekend.
4 comments:
how would you describe the relationship between repentance and regret?
(Assume that we're talking about proper, Godly repentance. though articulating that might be a post in itself!)
I, unlike Kelly Clarkson, will miss you when you're gone.
Amen! I have struggled (and do struggle) with issues of regret- I think it has something to do with being southern and a Baptist. A good friend once told me that there is no room for regret in a life you've given to a Sovereign God. Our Lord has used my biggest mistakes to draw me closer to Himself and glorify His name. One lesson I wish I had learned so much earlier than I did is that the true meaning of freedom in Christ includes freedom from regret. Sometimes I wonder how many blessings and opportunities with Christ that I've missed because I've been so hung up in sin and shame. I could probably go on to write a nice little testimony here, but I won't...
Keep preachin' it, my brotha!
Interesting. When I graduated college, I was hit with a major wave of regret. I could've used this post back then. But, I'm sure this will help current college seniors.
Le bon, le mal, c'est la vie.
upon further reflection, it might also be interesting to talk about how this quite proper (imho) view of regret is different from merely being a stoic about the past.
AK, I know you're thinking, "Uh, Dude? Why don't you write these answers yourself? Why do you make me do all the work here? This is a dialogue, not a monologue, and 'You' put the 'U' in dialogue, though monologue also has 'you' in it, but only in England, thought that applies to dialogue too, I guess . . . what was I talking about? I think I'll go make a sandwich."
See? I'm so in your head.
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