Overcoming Mistakes: Moving Past Regrets

Overcoming Mistakes: Regrets From The Past

7/14/2016 Ecclesiastes 12:1-7 Luke 7:36-50

We are in part 3 of our series of Overcoming Mistakes. Pastor Kellie showed us the mistakes we can make when we let our desires get our control. Last week Pastor Toby showed us the mistakes we can make when we let self pity take control of our lives.

This week we are going to look at how Regrets From the Past can come back to haunt us later in life. Today is valentine’s day. How many of you who have been old enough to fall in love, have at least one regret simply because you fell in love. Here’s some regrets that some of us have had over the years. (Show The Video).

As you can see, regrets come in all forms, shapes, sizes and to all ages. The real question in life is not whether or not we will have regrets, because we are all going to have them, the issue is what are we going to do with those regrets.

Will we use them to change our course of action for the future, will we use them to feel sorry for ourselves, or will we take a lesson from them to grow up. Some regrets will come from making the right decision, but you will still end up hurting someone in the process and you will regret their hurt..

The story is told of a A tourist was visiting a famous landmark on the ocean and he’d walked out on a pier to see the ocean better. But as he looked over the edge of the pier he was disturbed by how deep the water seemed to be.

As he was thinking about how deep the water must be at this point, he noticed an old man fishing off the pier, and he went over to him and asked: "If I were to fall into this water, would I drown?"

The old man smiled and said "Nah. Falling into the water isn't what drowns people. It's staying UNDER the water that drowns them.”

Doing things that cause regrets are not enough to kill you, its when those regrets paralyze you from moving closer to God that they are able to take you out.

There are some things that we can do for just a split second, that leaves us with the regret for a lifetime. I was a sprinter in high school and college and a pretty good one. I can recall The last 100 meter dash I was to run in at the end of my college career. There were six of us in the finals. All of us would get either medal or a ribbon. It was guaranteed.

I can still hear the guy saying, taking your mark, get set and everybody up. He came over to me and said I was disqualified because I leaned a little after he said, get set. That was the first time in all my years to be disqualified in a race.

I learned that even when you think something is guaranteed, you still may not get it. I also learned the fastest and the best, may not necessarily be the one or the team that won.

There are some regrets that come into our lives because of a series of choices that we make that take us down a path we had not intended to go. There was a woman in the bible who no doubt was smart, beautiful and business minded. Not a whole lot of business opportunities was available to this woman.

She must have been able to hang out with some of the rich and famous men, because she became involved in prostitution. She was more of your high end escort type of prostitute, because she made a considerable amount of money. She invested that money in rich perfume and beautiful alabaster bottles.

Her lifestyle didn’t do all for her that she had hoped it would. No doubt she regretted her family’s disappointment over the life she had chosen. She regretted the heartache she had brought into the marriages of the married clients that she had.

She realized that the life she had chosen was only taking her down further and further into misery and depression. Life just wasn’t worth it much anymore. But what could she do. She certainly could not go down to the temple and start over with God. Her reputation would keep her out before she got to even talk to a priest.

Let me ask you something “Can You Fall So Far Down You Can’t Get Up?” In other words: “Can you mess up your life so badly that you can’t undo the damage?”

And the answer from Scripture is… YES. You can mess things up so badly you can’t undo the damage.