No "Do-Overs"

For some odd reason, this has been a very reflective week for me. I have found myself thinking about choices I have made in my life. In Galatians 6 Paul reminds us that we reap what we sow. All throughout scripture God compels us to choose wisely. I just taught on “Choices and Consequences” on Wednesday night, March 25. You can listen to the teaching at http://www.gracefellowship.net/, but the point of this blog is that I look back on some decisions I made in my past and some of those decisions make me sad. Sometimes I wish we could go back in time, as people do in many science fiction programs, and fix the bad decisions I have made. Alas, there are no “do-overs” in life. Yes, we receive forgiveness and we often get second chances, but we have lost forever that moment in time.

Now that I am older and realize that I will not live forever. I realize, maybe too late, that every moment we live is precious and there have been way too many times in my past that I have been flippant about my decisions. I know this probably makes no sense to anyone today but me. I have been catching up with many friends from the past lately, which has been great, and I have a tendency to think of how much time I missed with good friends because I was so caught up with what I was doing in the moment and didn’t keep in touch with people I care about over the years. I’m remembering decisions I made which may have hurt other people and yet I cruised along in life oblivious to how it may have affected someone else and I’m sad that I did that. I’ve made other decisions that were good as well. Sometimes, I wish I could do it all over again and fix the problems but keep the good decisions. You know, this is exactly why the Lord compels us in scripture to make right decisions and He offers us His help. In younger days, I often blew off this help and only now do I realize some of the consequences.

Is there a light at the end of this blog? Well, of course there is…

I heard the wise philosopher, Gomer Pyle, say on many occasions, “Fool me once; shame on you. Fool me twice; shame on me.” :-) I believe that the lesson we can learn is that we don’t have forever and our decisions in this life do matter, even small ones. Let’s choose to live our lives more carefully than we did in years past and let’s live the rest of our lives to make sure that we have no regrets. Sound simple? Not necessarily, however, we do walk with one who knows the future that we will live. Scripture tells us that the God that I serve “knows the end from the beginning”. He told us in the book of James that if we lack wisdom, we can ask God and He will give it to us generously and without finding fault with us. Let’s do that. Let’s walk with God. He does know what our future holds and He knows what consequence each decision will bring. Let’s walk with Him and as my friend Bob Coy once said, “let’s finish well”. There are many in the Bible who start out well, but don’t finish well. Let us be the ones who may not have made all the best decisions in the past, but let’s choose this day to finish well and finally hear those words, “Well done good and faithful servant”.

Until Later,

Don