Have you ever been lying in bed, not able to sleep, because you can’t stop thinking of something you did that you wish you could change?
You lie there, eyes open or eyes closed—it doesn’t really make a difference—running that scene through your mind over and over again wishing that you would have said or done whatever it was that you believe would have made a difference—that would have made things better.
To put it more briefly: You regret.
You hope and wish there was a way for you to go back and fix things. You fantasize about fixing the mistake and making your life (or someone else’s) life better. But then, you naturally come back from that fantasy and realize that nothing has changed—that nothing can be changed. And then the regret gets more intense; it starts to pull you in deeper.
Left unchecked, regret can be a dangerous thing.
The truth is, though, most of the time we feel powerless against it. We can’t help but think of our past lives as something to improve or fix. Isn’t that the great wish of a lot of us? To be able to go back to certain points in our lives to either live them again with a fresh perspective, or to change the outcome of some event? How wonderful it would be to correct that mistake we made long ago? To not have to live swallowed up by that regret?
The problem for us is that we can’t go back. We can’t change what happened. We can’t undo the hurt we caused. We can’t go back and escape the pain that found us years ago.
But, O how we wish we could.
How wonderful would it be to be able to travel back 5, 10, or 20 years to say what only now we know we should have said? Of course it would change our lives for the better, right? We believe this. And, so, we spend time thinking about it. We trade sleep for wishing there was a way change things. We wonder about how much better things would be. How that relationship could have turned out different. How we could leave behind those awful feelings of disappointment. How we could have put ourselves in a better place than we are now.
Before we know it, we start to lose ourselves in regret.
It’s not all bad, though. I think regret is a good gift from God. The best thing about regret is that it gives way to hindsight—and hindsight is a blessing. It allows us to change and grow, and be better prepared for the future. But, troubled and fragmented people that we are, we have a tendency to turn blessings into curses. We take the good gift of regret and, instead of using it appropriately, we allow it to overtake us. We find ourselves regretting, doing little else, and having no good fruit to show for it.
Thankfully, we’ve not been left alone even in our deepest regret, because it’s not something that’s foreign to the Scriptures. In fact, it’s all over the place if we have eyes to see it.
Think we me, and let’s go right back to the beginning to Adam and Eve. How much do you think they regretted the decision they made to turn from God? They had everything. The world was there’s and God was with them. But, they gave it up and so plunged themselves—and the world—into darkness. I can’t imagine the regret they felt, especially after losing one of their two sons, ultimately as a result of their folly.
Or, think of Esau. He sold is birthright for some food. And he regretted it. Scripture tells us that after he realized the mistake he made he sought to change what he did—he actually wept over it. He was emotionally consumed by the regret of his actions and his desire go back and change things. His problem, though—the same as ours—there was no going back. He was hungry, sold his birthright, and could not get it back. What was done, was done.
What about Judas? One of the original twelve. A friend of Jesus. That is, until he was offered enough money to sell him out. After Judas realized what he had done he was filled with regret. He threw the money back to those who gave it to him and he hanged himself. Even though he tried, Judas knew he couldn’t change the past. And, because the regret he had over giving his friend up to death had consumed him, he also couldn’t find a way to move forward.
I really feel for Judas. He did what any number of other people would have done if they were in that same situation. The difference is, we have the opportunity to know something now, that Judas seemed to have missed out on: The gospel has something to say to us in our regret.
I think we see this clearly in Peter. Faithful and courageous Peter. The one who testified to who Jesus was before any of the other disciples. The one who walked on water because he had faith in Christ. And, yet…still the one who turned his back on the Lord.
The amazing thing is that Peter was even given a window that looked into his upcoming regret. Jesus told Peter that he would deny him, and Peter did it anyway—three times, he denied him. And then he saw what he had done, and he wept. Just as fast as it had happened, he regretted what he had done. Why in the world would he betray Jesus? Three years he spent with him. He had committed his life to the life of Jesus, and Jesus had committed his life to Peter’s. Even in that moment of realizing his denial mere moments after it happened, there was no way for Peter to go back and change it. He couldn’t put the words back in his mouth.
By the grace of God, this is where the gospel speaks loudly.
Jesus knew the regret was coming Peter before it happened.
“…but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Lk. 22:32, ESV).
Jesus saw the pain on its way, but he didn’t look for a way to get Peter out of it. Jesus didn’t give Peter a do-over. There was no, let’s run that one back and do better this time. Instead, Jesus prayed for his friend—not that he would escape the regret—but that he would realize what he had done, and move forward in faith from that regret.
This is good news. To be clear, this is God’s version of good news. Ours would probably be a constant going back to do things over again. Like it not, though, this is not how God operates. And we have to ask the question of ourselves: Am I okay with living how God intended, over and against how I think things should be done. It’s not an easy question to answer, but it is a necessary question to ask.
You see, we often think that the only way things can be made better is if we’re able to change what happened. God has other ideas. He knows that he can make things better as we go forward with him after the mistakes. We screw up and just want to go back, but God says, “Why don’t you stay close to me and trust that I’m going to bring something good out of this?”
We may wish we could go back to say or do the thing we now know we should have said or done. Okay—that’s fine—but, we can’t wish that forever. We must press on with God. To go at it on our own is idolatry. I can make it better. I can improve. I can fix this.
You can’t.
But, God can.
The gospel is the good news of God redeeming the world through Jesus in the midst of regret.
God moves forward. He makes a way. And he invites you and I to walk with him in faith. He invites you and I to be a part of that redemption—-to actually be redeemed ourselves.
The truth is, you and I are poor restorers. We want to fix what we can see, but we can’t see everything. We think if I just fix this or that, then everything would be alright, but our vision is too narrow. We need help.
May our regret not keep us from redemption; instead, may it motivate us to cling to Jesus as he helps us move forward.