Dealing with regret

What happens when you do that thing, or say that thing, that you should not have said? You can’t take it back. You can’t undo it. What do you do?

There is little you can do but try to make amends, apologize, and then live with the results of your mistake. We can’t undo our sin, but we can ask God to remove the burden. We can ask him to help us live with the reality of our own imperfection and our own failure. We can’t undo the damage, but we can hopefully grow and learn.

David was a “man after God’s own heart.” God loved him. And yet he was very imperfect. He fell into sin. The passage where Nathan comes to confront David has long been one of my favourite passages. It gets to the heart of how hard it can be to see sin in our own behaviour. It can sneak up on us and catch us unaware. But David, humbles himself. In doing this David becomes a very real role model for other sinners, like me.

Going through hard times does not protect you from temptation, rather it can open certain temptations. Things like pride, self pity and isolationism are among my greatest stumbling blocks. The events of the last year have been an extreme strain. I need to examine my own reactions and accept where I have failed.

But I also need to remember that this is the very reason why Jesus came to earth. It is for me he died.

I found this little video clip. I thought it was worth a watch. Taken from 2 Samuel chapter 12.