Wake Up!
How To Get Over Bad Decisions
4/13/05
I. Introduction
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about decision-making. The first week, I shared with you three keys to being confident in your decisions. Anybody remember the three keys?
1. Gather all the Info
2. Weigh the Consequences
3. Hear from the Holy Spirit
During the second week, I shared with you about “What Was I Thinking” moments and how you can look back at the decisions you make without making that statement and without having regret.
We talked about different types of decision makers and why you don’t want to make decisions like them. Anybody remember the three types of decision makers I talked about?
1. The “I Want it Now” Decision Maker – IMPULSE
2. The “I’ll Decide Tomorrow” Decision Maker – PROCRASTINATION
3. The “It Doesn’t Matter” Decision Maker – FORFEITING CONTROL
Alright, well, many of us have admitted that we’ve made decisions that we aren’t necessarily proud of. We can look back on decisions we’ve made, be it two weeks ago or 5 years ago and say, “That wasn’t the smartest thing to do.” And we can see how that one pivotal decision has had an impact on where we’re at now. And if we dwell on that decision too long, life will inevitably pass us by. So, tonight, I want to talk to you about how to get over the past and move on with your life. Tonight’s message is titled “Wake Up: How To Get Over Bad Decisions.” Most of the time when we’re caught daydreaming, it’s not positive daydreaming about the future or exercising our imaginations concerning the big things God has for us. If we’re honest, we’ll admit that most of our mindless wandering takes us back to the past. We’ll replay interactions with people that we’ve had. We’ll rerun past episodes of fear or accidents that took place. We’ll think back to those times where we said things that we shouldn’t have said or did things we shouldn’t have done. Even now as I’m talking, your mind is probably drifting back to one of those times…WAKE UP!
It’s time to find out how to get over it and move on.
II. You Can’t Change The Past
The first thing you need to do in order to get over the bad decisions you’ve made is realize that you can’t change the past. No matter how much you’d like to, you can’t go back to the past and right the wrongs or take back harsh words or do this instead of that. The past is behind you. What’s done is done. However, although you can’t physically go back in time to change things, you can take action now to correct things. If your mind starts wandering back to a time when you said something you shouldn’t have to a friend of yours and you realize that you never apologized and you haven’t talked to that friend in years, you can do something about that. Instead of letting that bad decision ruin your friendship, you can make a note to call that person up and say, “Hey, remember that time when I called you a stupid-head in third grade and you said you’d never be my friend again? Well, I just wanted to say I’m sorry and see if you wanted to try to hang out sometime.” And if he rejects your apology, just call him a stupid-head again and move on. Just kidding.
You can’t change the past, but you can change your future.
You can look back at the mistake you made in the past, and determine to learn something from it. Denis Waitley said, “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker.” If you keep making the same bad decision over and over again, you’re not learning from your mistake and you’re not getting over it and moving on.
If there was anybody who knew about making a bad decision, it was King David.
In 2 Samuel 11, we see the story of David’s bad decision.
2 Samuel 11 “1When that time of year came around again, the anniversary of the Ammonite aggression, David dispatched Joab and his fighting men of Israel in full force to destroy the Ammonites for good. They laid siege to Rabbah, but David stayed in Jerusalem.
2One late afternoon, David got up from taking his nap and was strolling on the roof of the palace. From his vantage point on the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was stunningly beautiful. 3David sent to ask about her, and was told, "Isn’t this Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 4David sent his agents to get her. After she arrived, he went to bed with her. (This occurred during the time of "purification" following her period.) Then she returned home. 5Before long she realized she was pregnant.
Later she sent word to David: "I’m pregnant."
6David then got in touch with Joab: "Send Uriah the Hittite to me." Joab sent him.
7When he arrived, David asked him for news from the front--how things were going with Joab and the troops and with the fighting. 8Then he said to Uriah, "Go home. Have a refreshing bath and a good night’s rest."
After Uriah left the palace, an informant of the king was sent after him. 9But Uriah didn’t go home. He slept that night at the palace entrance, along with the king’s servants.
10David was told that Uriah had not gone home. He asked Uriah, "Didn’t you just come off a hard trip? So why didn’t you go home?"
11Uriah replied to David, "The Chest is out there with the fighting men of Israel and Judah--in tents. My master Joab and his servants are roughing it out in the fields. So, how can I go home and eat and drink and enjoy my wife? On your life, I’ll not do it!"
12"All right," said David, "have it your way. Stay for the day and I’ll send you back tomorrow." So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem the rest of the day.
The next day 13David invited him to eat and drink with him, and David got him drunk. But in the evening Uriah again went out and slept with his master’s servants. He didn’t go home.
14In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. 15In the letter he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front lines where the fighting is the fiercest. Then pull back and leave him exposed so that he’s sure to be killed."
16So Joab, holding the city under siege, put Uriah in a place where he knew there were fierce enemy fighters. 17When the city’s defenders came out to fight Joab, some of David’s soldiers were killed, including Uriah the Hittite.
18Joab sent David a full report on the battle. 19He instructed the messenger, "After you have given to the king a detailed report on the battle, 20if he flares in anger, 21say, "And by the way, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.’"
22Joab’s messenger arrived in Jerusalem and gave the king a full report. 23He said, "The enemy was too much for us. They advanced on us in the open field, and we pushed them back to the city gate. 24But then arrows came hot and heavy on us from the city wall, and eighteen of the king’s soldiers died."
25When the messenger completed his report of the battle, David got angry at Joab. He vented it on the messenger: "Why did you get so close to the city? Didn’t you know you’d be attacked from the wall? Didn’t you remember how Abimelech son of Jerub-Besheth got killed? Wasn’t it a woman who dropped a millstone on him from the wall and crushed him at Thebez? Why did you go close to the wall!"
"By the way," said Joab’s messenger, "your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead."
Then David told the messenger, "Oh. I see. Tell Joab, "Don’t trouble yourself over this. War kills--sometimes one, sometimes another--you never know who’s next. Redouble your assault on the city and destroy it.’ Encourage Joab."
26When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead, she grieved for her husband. 27When the time of mourning was over, David sent someone to bring her to his house. She became his wife and bore him a son.
But GOD was not at all pleased with what David had done.”
David totally screwed up. He made a bad decision in the first place when he slept with a married woman. He made another bad decision when he had Uriah, her husband, killed. Then, he married Bathsheba.
David tried so hard to cover up his mistake, but he couldn’t change what he’d already done. It was in the past. He could, however, change his future. Although David made this terrible mistake, he was still known as “a man after God’s own heart.” In Psalm 51, we see David’s prayer to God to cleanse him from his sin, create in him a clean heart and renew a right spirit within him. He realized that what he had done was a mistake, but he didn’t let that mistake keep him chained up and imprisoned in the past. He went on to do great things for God. David and Bathsheba’s first son died, but they had another son after that, and his name was Solomon, who became the wisest and wealthiest King of Israel and who also built the temple of God.
So what if you’ve screwed up in the past. So what if you’ve made bad decisions that have had an impact on your life. You can’t change what you’ve done, but you can change what you will do!
III. Fuh-get About It
If you keep your focus on the past, you’ll lose sight of what’s happening now and what’s going to happen in the future.
Isaiah 43:18 CEV “18Forget what happened long ago! Don’t think about the past.”
Imagine that you’re behind the wheel of a car and you’re driving full speed ahead. If your eyes are constantly fixed on the rear view mirror, looking only at what’s behind, what’s going to happen? You’ll most likely wreck! But if you’re staring out the front windshield focusing on what’s ahead, what’s going to happen? You’ll continue moving forward without getting off course. Too many times in life, we put our focus on the past and we can’t seem to get over what’s behind us. Learn a lesson from the rear-view mirror. The rear-view mirror is only a fraction of the size of the front windshield. That should tell us that most of our focus should be on what’s in front of us.
Philippians 3:13-14 NIV 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Fuh-get about the past mistakes and failures, and move on towards what is ahead. Don’t spend time thinking about what might have been.
There’s a country song by a band called Little Texas called “What Might Have Been” and I want you to listen to the lyrics of this song:
Sure I think about you now and then,
But it’s been a long long time.
I’ve got a good life now, And I’ve moved on
So when you cross my mind...
I try not to think about what might have been,
Cause that was then and we have taken different roads.
We can’t go back again, there’s no use giving in.
And there’s no way to know, what might have been.
We could sit and talk about this all night long,
And wonder why we didn’t last.
Yes they might be the best days we will ever know,
But we’ll have to leave them in the past.
So try not to think about what might have been,
Caus that was then and we have taken different roads.
We can’t go back again, there’s no use giving in,
And there’s no way to know...
What might have been.
The same old look in your eyes; it’s a beautiful night,
I’m so tempted to stay.
But too much time has gone by; we should just say goodbye,
And turn and walk away.
And try not to think about what might have been,
Cus that was then and we have taken different roads.
We can’t go back again, there’s no use giving in,
And there’s no way to know what might have been.
No we’ll never know...what might have been
Now, this song is of course about a relationship that didn’t work out, but the same principle can be applied to whatever decision you made in the past. Don’t think about what might have been. There’s no way to know what could have happened if you did this instead of that, so there’s no use in dwelling on it. Forget about those past mistakes and move on towards what God is calling you to do.
Don’t be afraid to make a decision. Just remember what we’ve talked about and you can make the right decision every time!
Let’s pray.
