2 Corinthians 1:20 “For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!” And through Christ, our “Amen” (which means “Yes”) ascends to God for his glory.” All God’s promises have been fulfilled. There is not one thing that God promised that He has not followed through on. That is amazing. I wish I could say the same. Do you sometimes dwell on things a little too long? Do you tend to regret past choices. Regret is an awful feeling. This episode is talking about regret and how you can learn to not stay in negative feelings for too long. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The Tree House
2 Corinthians 1:20 “For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!” And through Christ, our “Amen” (which means “Yes”) ascends to God for his glory.”
All God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “yes!” How great is that? All God’s promises have been fulfilled. There is not one thing that God promised that He has not followed through on. That is amazing. I wish I could say the same. There is a house down the street from us that just got renovated. The new owners built a whole new second floor to this house. They also did a lot of renovations on the outside of the house and in the yard. One thing they built in the yard is a beautiful tree house. It looks so awesome and even has a climbing wall on one side so if they didn’t want to take the stairs, they could take the more difficult way up.
I feel like life is like this. I feel like God provides us the stairs to make it to the top, but often times we choose the climbing wall. We could choose the path that was pretty well laid out for us where we just need to put one foot in front of the other and climb one step at a time. We know the next right step and we continue to take each step until we reach the end. However, sometimes we choose the difficult path. Sometimes we choose the climbing wall. We chose the path where we don’t know what the next step is. We need to feel our way through and look for where each new step is. We can’t find the next step until we take the first step. And depending on where we step, we will have limited options for our next step.
The reason I thought of this tree house when the reading was talking about promises is because we told our middle son, Noah, that we would help him build a tree house. And yet that never happened? Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever told someone, promised someone, that you would do something, and then not done it. It is an awful feeling to not keep a promise and to let someone down. I am not sure why it never got done. I am sure I can find a whole list of excuses. However, none of them make me feel better when I see the beautiful tree house this family built.
Regret is a terrible feeling. I am definitely not a fan. It is definitely an opening for the enemy to get in and destroy some people. I have seen it numerous time on TV and movies. Can you think of anyone you know that just can’t let go of something that happened in the past? Sometimes we can get stuck on something in our past and we let it bother us for far too long. I am not saying we shouldn’t feel bad if we broke a promise to someone. I wish we were like God and we could keep every promise that we make. Unfortunately, we are a broken people and so occasionally, we will break promises.
What is important is what we do after we break a promise. Do we repent and ask the person for forgiveness? Do we forget about everything and start over again? Do we pretend it never happened and just move on? What is the right protocol in this scenario? I would say we should go back to the golden rule. How would you like someone to act towards you in this scenario. I think repentance is important. Tell the person you are sorry you did not follow through with the action you promised you would do. Try to make it up to them in some way. If you can’t make it up to them then apologize and move forward from there.
What is not a good idea in this situation is to sit and think about what you did over and over again. Regret is not good because it eats away at you slowly from the inside. I read a book once called Miracle Mornings. It is a book by Hal Elrod. It is an excellent read in case you have not heard of it before. It is a book about how to start a really helpful morning routine. Anyway, the author talks about a 5 minute rule that I feel could be really helpful here. He used to see Cutco knives. He would get really upset when someone would cancel their appointment with him because he worked off commission. His boss told him about the 5 minute rule. This is a way to not get stuck in the negative feelings. He said when something upsets you take a minute and think about whether or not you can change the thing that just happened? For instance, someone calls up to cancel and appointment with you at the last minute. Can you change the fact that this customer canceled? No. In this case, where there is nothing that you can do to change it, you set a timer for 5 minutes and that is how long you allow yourself to be upset. You have 5 minutes to yell, scream, cry, etc and then you need to move on.
Hal found this 5 minute rule to be very helpful in his life. At first he said it took longer than 5 minutes. He said after 5 minutes if you still can’t let the emotions go, set the timer for another 5 minutes. Eventually you will train yourself to let things go sooner. If there is nothing you can do about a situation then there is no reason to keep dwelling on it.
This is what the enemy wants. He wants us to dwell on what is going wrong in our lives. He wants to keep us in a state of unhappiness. Unhappiness with who we are and what is going wrong. When we are thinking about all that is going wrong, then we are not praising God for all that is going right. When we are focusing all our energy on what we did and who we let down then our focus is inward on ourselves instead of our focus being on God, which is a much better place for our focus. The next time you are regretting something you did or did not do, take a minute and think about the 5 minute rule. Can you change the situation? If not, give yourself some time to be upset and then move on.
Dear Heavenly Father, I know you love us and don’t hold our mistakes against us. Lord, I ask that you help us to forgive ourselves. Why is it that we can forgive others more quickly than we can forgive ourselves. Lord, we ask that you teach us to not regret past mistakes. We ask that you help us learn any lessons we need to learn from it and then move forward. Father, we ask that you help anyone that is suffering from regret right now. We ask that you free them from this feeling. Lord, we know the enemy is looking for any way to get into our lives and we don’t want to give him an open door. Close all doors of regret and cover us in your protection oh Lord. Lord we thank you for being so amazing and wonderful. You are the God of all things and we are nothing without you. Living a life without regret is not easy, but we know it is possible because all things are possible through Christ who strengthens us. We love you Lord and we ask all these things in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I take you in my arms as a father caresses his child. I find so much joy just being near you. I whisper in your ear, I love you.”