What does it look like to live without regret? If we live for any length of time, we grieve over our choices filled with errors, failures, and rebellion. We not only look back with regret, but we feel its weight behind our conscious thoughts. Dealing with our sin and the sin of others is painful.

But there is a solution for sin: call it what it is—sin. There is no solution for excusing it, minimizing it, renaming or redefining it. When we receive the truth that we don’t have a punishing Father, we can begin to see His heart and ways. We can recognize it is His mercy to uncover any hindrance to His love and truth. We can even welcome His mercy to give us sight of what we have hidden, even to ourselves.

The world’s sorrow, which lacks repentance results in spiritual death. But the sorrow we experience is used to deliver us: to turn us away from sin and turn us back to God. “There is no regret for that kind of sorrow” (see 2 Corinthians 7:8-10).

Receive deliverance—receive God’s gift of conviction and correction. Submit all your lost time, lost relationships, lost resources to Him. Be forgiven, cleansed, and purified. Exchange each weight of regret with the weighty pressure of His mighty hand upon you: His glory-presence—His mercy, comfort, healing, and anointing. He restores strength to you, increases strength, and gives you the gift of durability in the most difficult, emptiest of places (see Isaiah 40:28-31).

From your deserted ruins and rubble of the past, God empowers you to rebuild the foundation and leave a legacy of honor. He began each family line; He guides its destiny, and He will be there in the end (see Isaiah 41:4). 

It’s time to turn our regrets into a testimony of God’s goodness.