Regret is that heavy feeling. Maybe that heaviness is keeping you at a distance from God.
- If you are going to find your way back to God you must have the spiritual awakening that brings you to say, “God I want to start over.”
- Without this awakening, and the turning that follows, you will continue to sleepwalk through life, unaware of your destructive patterns, big and small.
- Until you see and move toward new life that can be yours you will keep moving toward a life of pain boredom and doom.
The one word that best describes this awakening process is repentance.
- Unfortunately, the word repentance has lost its original meaning and is more associated with street preachers and feeling bad about yourself.
Repentance is not limited to emotions like contrition, guilt, and remorse.
- Repentance is more about action
- It’s the starting over that happens as a result of those emotions.
- The thing is we can feel bad and wish things were different and still not be repentant.
Regret is meant to be a starting place – a catalyst for getting us moving.
- The New Testament writer Paul, whose past gave him plenty of reasons for regret, put it this way: “Godly sorrows brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”
Repentance Is Motion, Not Emotion. Think of the repentance from now on as a turning point.
- It means to turn from whatever is distracting you or pulling you away from God to intentionally turn toward God.
- this is something you will do not once but rather over and over again
Resource: Realize
become fully aware of (something) as a fact; understand clearly
Turning points change you forever. You are going down a path, and something happens that takes you into a new direction.
- Repentance is the realization that the direction you are heading in is taking you far from God and all the good he wants for you.
- And so you turn from what you were pursuing and turn toward God.
In order to find your way to God, you need to do a serious inventory of your life. Ask yourself:
- What do I think about that pulls me away from God?
- What do I indulge in that distracts me from God?
- What do I avoid that could draw me near to God?
This moment is a turning point for you.
- Either you will move forward and find your way back to God, or you will retreat, repeat your mistakes, and experience a life of regret.
- The best choice seems obvious. But making that choice is up to you.
Like the prodigal son, many of us reject the things of the father and set out on our own.
- We search for love more satisfying than his.
- We pursue causes that are not directed by him.
- We try to make sense out of life without a loving God in the equation.
- We get ourselves lost in God’s big world, and when we are ready, we come back to him, and he refuses to hold it against us.
Repentance is here. Find your way back home
craving and resource from “Finding your Way Back to God” by Dave and Jon Ferguson
