Month: January 2018

Galatians 5:22-23

Speaking about regret. . .

A woman awoke during the night to find that her husband was not in bed. She put on her robe and found him sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. He appeared to be in deep thought, just staring at the wall. She saw him wipe a tear from his eye and take a sip of his coffee. “What’s the matter dear?” she asked.

“Do you remember twenty years ago when we were dating at the age 16?”

“Yes, honey, I do,” she replied.

“Do you remember when your father caught us kissing in your basement?”

“Yes, I remember that like it was yesterday,” she blushes.

“Do you remember when he shoved that shotgun in my face and said, ‘Either you marry my daughter or spend twenty years in jail?’”

“Yea, I remember that too, what are you getting at?” she said.

He wiped another tear from his cheek and said, “You know, I would have gotten out today.”

Last week, we reminded ourselves that regrets cause us to be unhappy. I talked about some action steps we could take in order to deal with past regrets. I also told you that today I would spend some time talking about what we can do in the present to avoid piling up regret in the future.

If you google this subject, you will see that there are many articles that have been written on this subject from different perspectives offering advice that is beyond the scope of our time today and covering things that are beyond the realm of my expertise. Many of them come from the Self-Help/Psychology ilk and offer such advice as Follow Your Dream, Trust Your Gut, Take Risks, Take Life Less Seriously, Be Yourself in order to avoid future regret. And while all of these have merit, and a Christian connection, I need to stick to the kind of advice that comes from a Biblical perspective. I offer four Biblical prescriptions that will help us avoid regret down the road. (more…)

Philippians 3:1-14
Have you ever found yourself wishing you had done things differently in the past? Ever been tempted to think if only I had done this or that my life would have turned out better?

My guess is all of us can sing right along with Frank Sinatra the first line of the second verse of his classic I Did It My Way: ‘Regrets, I’ve had a few.’ And all of us I am sure are envious of the next line: ‘But then again, too few to mention.’

Because the truth is that most of us have more than a few things we regret.

Bonnie Ware, a palliative care nurse, and author of The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, describes the following regrets as being in common among her patients:

“I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
“I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
“I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
“I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”
“I wish that I had let myself be happier.”

A regret is defined as when we feel sad, repentant, remorseful or disappointed because of something that we have done, or something we haven’t done or a loss or missed opportunity.

Regret interferes with our happiness because we can’t be happy and sad, repentant, remorseful or disappointed at the same time.

John Greenleaf Whittier expressed the concept of regret poetically:

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
the saddest are, ‘It might have been.’” ¹

Do you think we are the only people of God who have regrets? (more…)

Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11, 26-31

I hope and pray that all of us have a wonderful, glorious, healthy, and prosperous and happy new year. But the truth is none of us knows what lies ahead.

For sure this year will bring the kind of bittersweet mixture Solomon wrote about in his oft-quoted passage in Ecclesiastes 3: (selected)

There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven:
A time to be born and a time to die; a time to cry and a time to laugh.
A time to grieve and a time to dance; a time to love and a time to hate.
A time for war and a time for peace.

My goal as your pastor and friend is to spiritually prepare you for whatever your future may hold in 2018. I want to help you be enabled to face whatever is facing you with the steadfastness that comes from faith and assurance that comes from God.

To assist us in this regard I turn to the words of Isaiah the prophet, who ministered in the 6th century BC.

The Israelites started out the year 587 BC just like you and I do; with high hopes for a prosperous and happy new year. Little did they know that God would allow their land to be invaded by foreigners, that the city of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple would be destroyed, that many would be killed and that many more would be taken into captivity.

That event that we call ‘The Exile’ created a theological crisis. If God lived in the Temple, and the Temple was destroyed, what does that say about God? Where was God when the Babylonians attacked? More to the point, ‘Where is He now?’ these captives wanted to know.

The questions they were asking are sometimes our questions. And the questions boil down to one: “Can we trust that God is for us?” (more…)