Wake Up

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.