NO Regret!

When I was young, I wanted to be a teacher.  As I grew older, I loved social studies and history and my dream was to be a high school history teacher. After high school graduation, I moved to ECU to pursue my dream. Two weeks later, (or 10 days to be exact as my family always likes to remind me), my mother came to Greenville, helped me pack up my things, and moved me back home. I made the decision to leave college and my dream died a quick and pitiful death. But it was a decision I would soon regret. And it was a decision that I would allow through the years to shape the view I have of myself and one that I’ve allowed to limit my view of our Limitless God.

Regret.  We all have regrets! You too may have the regret of sin, bad decisions, choices, failure, disappointments, and the death of dreams.  If you think our regret is bad, imagine living in a whole nation of regret! The Jews were in desperate circumstances. They had rebelled against God. They made bad decisions, they sinned, they suffered. They had been invaded by the enemy, were taken captive, and exiled from their homeland. Surely, they experienced regret.

But God sent Isaiah the Prophet to His people to remind them of his great love for them. In Isaiah 43, God reminds them of WHO he is and who they are. He is the LORD, the Holy One of Israel. He is their Savior. He is their Creator and they belong to Him. He reminds them that because of his faithfulness in the past, and his presence with them, they can trust him with the future. God gave His people these words of comfort in Isaiah 43:18-19 –

“Forget the former things;
    do not dwell on the past.
¹⁹ See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.

Whatever they had done, it did not change God. It did not change his character.  It did not change what God had done and what he would do. The good news for us is that God’s comfort to his people years ago is his comfort to us now. Our sin, bad decisions, choices, failure, disappointments, and death of dreams don’t change Almighty God. Our regret does not change God’s sovereignty in our lives. His love remains and His promises still stand. His power and faithfulness are limitless. God reminds his people, and that includes believers in His Son Jesus Christ, that they need to forget the former things. Let go of the regret and take hold of God’s promise of a new thing.

My decision to leave college is just one from the past that I’ve allowed affecting my perspective of myself and my God. Other decisions and mistakes have left me feeling inadequate, unqualified, and unequipped to do what God has purposed and planned for me to do. How easy it is for us to look at ourselves, with our inadequacies instead of directing our eyes to Almighty God, who is Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omniscient. But God commands us to look forward and not back and trust Him with the new thing He is doing. He promises to make a way and provision for the new thing; a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

Yes, the world does require a college degree to teach high school history and I don’t have one. It’s a path I chose to take, a decision I made. But I don’t have to dwell on that decision and it doesn’t have to shape the view of myself.  We don’t have to dwell on our regrets! God commands us to choose to look forward not back and to trust him with the new thing he is doing. That’s a good decision to make with no regret!

© 2017 Robin R King