I’ve never seen the movie, but I’ve seen clips from a movie with Jennifer Anniston where her daughter brings home a guy with a tattoo on his chest that says, “NO RAGRETS”, and the dad in the movie says something to the effect of, “you really have no regrets, not even one little letter?” For some reason I find that hysterical and while I’ve never actually watched the movie, we quote that scene playfully often!

The truth is we all have regrets, we all have things we wish we would have done or said differently. For some odd reason these memories pop up at the oddest times and when you reflect on them, sometimes from a much more mature season of life, you can see the trouble whatever action it was caused for you or your reputation and how it had long lasting effects. I was pondering on just that sort of memory this morning, (showers, walks in the sunshine and time in the saddle will make me do that) regretting my young self’s decision-making process.

Today I can look back and understand the “why” behind some of my poor decisions, but it still doesn’t make me regret them any less. I have always had the desire to be included, liked, and accepted. A lot of people do, I’m not alone in that, my desire and the fact that I had moved around so much and always felt like an outsider drove me to make great effort to fit in. Sadly, it was often to the detriment of my character or reputation. For some reason this morning I remembered being around a group of kids in junior high or early high school and because, of the nature of the conversation that was going on and my desire to fit in and be one of them, telling some filthy jokes I had overheard from some adults and using incredibly course and foul language. Ordinarily, I would never speak like that but in that moment and others I did, and it began to shape my peers’ mental model of me and the type of person I was even though it was far from how I really was inside. Today, I’m utterly repulsed by the entire exchange and definitely disappointed in myself. There have been other poor decisions and many more regrets since then, but I started thinking this morning, what if, as a kid, I really took 1Corinthians 10:31 seriously and ran every thought or action through the filter of, “would this please the Lord and glorify Him?” If so, I could be living a life with no regrets.

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

1Corinthians 10:31 NASB95

I’ve already mentioned my love for the internal consistency of the Bible, so you might expect that’s not the only verse that encourages Godly living, it’s just a short easy to remember one. In our house in Texas when the kids were all in elementary school, we used a “classroom” type setting and had a little classroom set up for school each day. I had Psalms 34:13 hung on the wall which read, “keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies.” I also had 1 Corinthians 10:5 about taking your thoughts captive and conforming them to the will of Christ, hanging on the wall as well as Philippians 4:8 about what to focus on instead, which I think also pairs really well with the following verse of Psalm 34 verse 14 which says, “turn from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.” This was in a great effort to hide God’s word in my kiddos’ hearts, and mine too, and encourage Godly living.

Here’s the kicker I thought about this morning. I have often been a fan of teaching my kids “the why”, sometimes I wish I had not, now and even as they began to get a little older, they always excepted “the why” behind whatever it was I told them to do. We had to work out that upon occasion I just needed them to obey quickly, and trust that I’d get to “the why” later. A lesson I wish I had learned when I was younger in regard to obeying God’s word in the now and letting Him bring understanding later. But here’s the deal, there are a lot of us that have lived through a few things, and we do understand “the why” about those things so why aren’t we spelling it out for the younger generation? Youth are willing to listen, all teenagers aren’t rebellious rabble rousers regardless of the impression they give, some of the deepest most insightful conversations I have had the pleasure of having, which better helped me understand the struggles youth face while navigating our ever-changing, tumultuous world have been from those very same “trouble making” youth!

I really think if someone had sat down with me and told me that the things I chose to say and not to say, and the activities I chose to participate in or not to participate in were going to build my reputation and other’s mental models of me, and that it could either help me or hurt me, I might have tried a little harder, especially if they had pointed me to God’s word and explained that it has less to do with your reputation and external validation from others and more to do with God’s reputation as you are a professing Christain, made in His image (Gen 1:26) and an ambassador for Christ (2Corinthians 5:20, Eph 6:20). Also let me add Malachi 2:7 which is referring to the lips of the priest and how he is a messenger of the Lord of hosts..ie ambassador.. (pre incarnate Christ..before Christ’s birth, death, burial, and resurrection), now (after Christ) we (all believers of every tribe and tongue) are a kingdom of priests (1Peter 2:9, Rev1:6) ambassadors for Christ, to share His message! Ya’ll this is good stuff!!!! What we do and say and choose not to do and say is important if we have truly surrendered to follow Christ as Lord of our lives. This doesn’t just apply on Sunday and Wednesday and church functions, this is anytime, anywhere, anyplace….. work, school, inside the closed doors of your home, your bedroom, your phone, etc. because Jesus is Lord at all of those times, and you should be making decisions in all of those places with that in mind. It’s about representing Christ rightly through our lives as ambassadors for Him so that others will be drawn to Him as a result, therefore, it’s about His reputation. More than one person has been turned away from “Christianity” because someone claiming to be Christian didn’t act Christ like. Represent well, it actually does matter.

If I had only grasped that younger, I could have lived a life untethered to regret. However, when we confess our sins to the Lord he is faithful to forgive us ( 1John 1:9) and separate them as far as the East is from the West(Psalm 103:12). So, while I do regret many of my actions, I sit here and type without condemnation of them because of Christ alone! (Rom 8:1) Sheesh, isn’t the Word of God literally ALL THA THINGS!!!!! Thank you Jesus!