I'll be concluding this series on developing intimacy with God by sharing on regret, ambition, current experience and our potential.
For today's message I'll be focusing on regret:
I'm sure that from time to time people live with the regret of decisions that they wish they had made or some that they wish they hadn't made - either way, they live with regret and with the thought of, "what if I did this?" or "if only I had done this". Now we can certainly learn from our past mistakes but what I want to focus on here is how this feeling of regret can lead to disappointment, discouragement, frustration and can cause people to quit. None of us are perfect, we will at some point or another, make a wrong decision - more than once - maybe even multiple times. This is a reality, and the sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we can move on. The past is in the past, we cannot change what just happened a minute ago, it's gone, it's past, it can never be redone ... and while the devil is trying to keep our minds stuck on the past, God is wanting us to ask Him for forgiveness, forgive ourselves and others, and continue living our lives in covenant with Him and for His glory.
You see my friend, the truth of the matter is that time moves on and what's more important is how we choose to respond to this: Knowing that we cannot change the past but can only focus on what lies ahead serves as an encouragement to be/do better going forward.
The Apostle Paul made the following statement about his time on Earth:
2 Timothy 4:6-8
... the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.
His story reflects a life of someone who made wrong choices but later made up for it by living the rest of his life for God's will and purpose. He didn't dwell on his past mistakes to the point where it made him ineffective going forward. He didn't meditate on it long enough to allow him to lose momentum, courage, ambition and faith for all God still required of his life. It's amazing because he made the above declaration in full knowledge of his past mistakes but his faith in the mercy, forgiveness and love of God enabled him to move forward, to fulfil what he needed to and to run the race God set before him - to the point where he had full assurance that he fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith and was now looking forward to his eternal reward and dwelling place with God.
My prayer for you is that you would have the same outcome: that you wouldn't be trapped by your past or allow the past to prevent you from stepping into your future, that you would allow the love, mercy, patience, forgiveness and power of God to do what it needs to so that you can begin to live and experience everything God desires for you, that you wouldn't allow regret to hold you captive from moving forward and that just like Paul, you will also one day say, "the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day"
Amen
2 Timothy 4:6-8
... the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.
His story reflects a life of someone who made wrong choices but later made up for it by living the rest of his life for God's will and purpose. He didn't dwell on his past mistakes to the point where it made him ineffective going forward. He didn't meditate on it long enough to allow him to lose momentum, courage, ambition and faith for all God still required of his life. It's amazing because he made the above declaration in full knowledge of his past mistakes but his faith in the mercy, forgiveness and love of God enabled him to move forward, to fulfil what he needed to and to run the race God set before him - to the point where he had full assurance that he fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith and was now looking forward to his eternal reward and dwelling place with God.
My prayer for you is that you would have the same outcome: that you wouldn't be trapped by your past or allow the past to prevent you from stepping into your future, that you would allow the love, mercy, patience, forgiveness and power of God to do what it needs to so that you can begin to live and experience everything God desires for you, that you wouldn't allow regret to hold you captive from moving forward and that just like Paul, you will also one day say, "the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day"
Amen
Therefore in the context of developing intimacy with God, we cannot change our past experience, nor should we live with regret in this area, what we should rather do is take a snapshot of our lives as it is right now and assess our current experience in relation to where we find ourselves with God so that going forward we can start making the right choices.
Another way to help start that process is by reflecting on the below scenario (question) where it challenges us to compare our current experience with where we actually want to be / what we want to become.
"Let's say your future self could return to the past and they appeared before you today, what would they say to you? What advice or encouragement would they give you? What would they tell you to stop doing, start doing and keep doing?"
I'll share more on this next time when I speak about "Ambition".
I'll share more on this next time when I speak about "Ambition".