Gaining Power and Freedom Over Regret

Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them. Romans 4:7-8

We all have regrets; either regret from something we did, or regret from from something we did not do. 

What is your greatest regret? Take a moment and think through the answer to that question. Consider writing your answer down on a piece of paper. Name your regret. You see, the power to name is the power to own. If you name your regret, you own it. If you own your regret you have a choice about what to do with it. An unnamed regret owns you. 

Can you name your regret?  

The evil one wants you to be shackled by regret, to be named and defined by it. Satan wants you to be made incapable of living the life God has for you because you are trapped in the past by regret. But God want’s you free, free to embrace the fullness and wholeness the life you we were created to live. The Apostle Paul writes, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)

Often we choose to live with regrets because we think we should. We think it’s the right thing to do—that it is our duty before God — that somehow regret and repentance are the same thing. They are not. Repentance is a recognition and response to God who in his grace has show us that there is a better way, a way of freedom, a way of the Kingdom of God. And, that this way is available to us right now. 

The Kingdom of God is regret-free. God’s invitation freedom from regrets. The pathway, naming your regrets, owning them, giving them to God and then moving on. Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them.

Peace, hope and love

Doug

Against All Hope

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”  Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead.  Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God,  being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. (Romans 4:18–21)

“Against all hope.” Those are interesting words. I have personally been in that place where the day to day seemed “against all hope,” a place and a season where hope seemed far off or absent? Many of you have been there or are there now. I have come to see that it is precisely in these times where the mystery of hope becomes a reality, since hope at times where everything is going well is in some ways not really needed. The questions come, “what does it look like to hope against hope.” “What does it look like if hope is not even imaginable and must be brought to you by others who have been given the grace to hope against hope.” 

This past Sunday at Creekside was Hope Sunday -- a time for each of us to take on the mantle of hope, to be bringers of hope to people living in hopelessness in Congo. We watched a video that gave us a glimpse of both the darkness and the opportunity, the hopelessness and the hope for Congo. In that video, Curt Peterson of Covenant World Mission says in the video, “I weep for the children who are on the edge of life and death. It is not their fault. And they have no power to get beyond that edge to safety. They are vulnerable, invisible and God calls us to the least of these.” I share those sentiments, I share that belief. 

At this moment, our church and our denomination have been given an amazing opportunity. Through our trust in God, our joining together and our partnership with World Vision we have the ability to actually bring hope -- tangible, practical, life saving hope -- to people, against all hope. We have the opportunity to enter into the sweet spot of God’s heart for the least, the lost and the left behind, to change the world and to be changed in the process. The gateway for us in doing this is child sponsorship. This past Sunday we were all given a picture of a child from this region and asked to pray about sponsoring them, to pray about the region and to pray about our partnership. Though we already sponsor a child, Kelly and I entered Sunday with the intention to sponsor one of these children. We left sponsoring two. 

How has God been speaking to you this process? What has he been saying? Ask that you might hear him. Think about what you hear.  Check out the Covenant and the World Vision sites. 

I hope that you will join me in sponsoring a child. In doing so you will both bless that child, but also enter a partnership of hope that is bigger than the individual children, but that comes to us through them.

Peace, hope and love

Doug  

The Gift

This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that’s reading the story backwards. He is our faith father.  We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as father of many peoples”? Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. (Romans 4:16–17 The MESSAGE)

I enjoyed listening to the message that Pastor Rick Hampton gave at Creekside this past Sunday. I loved his illustrations driving home the point made in the passage above. So many of us have spent way too long trying to pay for what God freely gives; carrying heavy things around, things that God never intended for us to have to carry. 

God is an inviter, continually inviting us to live into the reality of his free and pure gift of goodness and right standing, righteousness, adoption, salvation, peace, freedom -- from him and through him. As amazing as his gift is, I think practically we so often leave it unclaimed and unopened, not realizing in our actual lives the reality of our salvation. We choose to carry weights of earning, obligation or regret. Jesus wants us to be free form all of that. 

What weights are you carrying that you should not be?

• something from your past?
• a current facade that takes energy to maintain?
• a sense of obligation or earning that God requires for you to truly belong? 

What would it look like to be free from that the weight?  

It is not your weight to carry. As the passage above put it, “the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift.” 

Accept it, open it and enjoy it.   

Peace, hope and love

Doug

Freed

But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished — he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26)

What does the righteousness of God mean to you? Not how do you would describe it, or what it means theologically, but what it means you today in the actual life you live?

The good news of a righteousness from God is the good news of a whole new reality in Christ. Not merely a theological reality but a practical one; not something that is observed merely intellectually or spiritually but that is owned deep within and expressed in tangible ways.

Freed to Move Toward the Margins

An we live into the reality that our righteousness (our goodness) comes from God and not from the things we do, we will be freed to move with compassion and mercy wherever God leads us. We will be freed to move in love toward the very person, cause or concern from which we would normally pause due the judgementalism and prejudice that exist in each of us. We will be freed to  truly love our enemy because we recognize that the qualities which make them our enemy are qualities that but for the grace of God we share.

Freed to Live Beyond My Limitations

Conversely, as we live into this reality, we are freed to move into areas that in ourself we believe are off limits -- to high, too lofty, too big. Each of us engages, on some level, in negative talk: “I’m not good enough for that,” “I don’t know enough do do that,” “I could not really make a difference there.” As we internalize the reality that goodness comes from God, we are freed into the reality that there is no good that we cannot strive towards.

In a word, the gospel sets us free. Free to live into the reality where we can say, “I am weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed, but, through Jesus, I am more loved and accepted than I ever dared hope.”

Peace, hope and love


Doug

Living In Reality

There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless;  there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Romans 3:12-18

What evil are you capable of? What evil are we as a people capable of?

The second question is easier to answer because it is someone removed from ourselves, and because we see the answer on the evening news every day. The first question is more personal, it’s you, it’s me. What evil am I capable of? The question itself can offend. And yet the reality is that the evil that society is capable of is conceived in and delivered by individuals first. it is conceived and implemented by individuals, but by me? No. I have my problems, but I could never do evil. Or could I?

In the passage from Roman's, above, Paul paints a bleak portrait of humanity -- macro and micro -- societal and individual. What do I make of that? What do you make of that? In the early 20th Century, a British magazine solicited prominent people to submit essays answering the question” What’s wrong with the world.” Author G.K. Chesterton submitted the shortest: “Dear Sir: Regarding your article ‘What's Wrong with the World?' I am.” How would you respond to that question? How do you see yourself in the puzzle of the problems of the world. The answer to this question is at the heart of the gospel. A realistic understanding of ourselves “in ourselves” and ourselves ‘in Christ” leads to a freedom giving realization that that we are actually weaker and more sinful than we ever before believed, but, through Jesus, we are more loved and accepted than we ever dared hope. With that realization, we no longer have to answer the question "am I good enough?" Instead we can move with the reality of the goodness from God full speed into a life of partnership with him in all the realities of our everyday life.

Peace, hope and love

Doug