God’s Hope for Your Heart from 2 Corinthians 7
JESUS WANTS TO FREE YOU FROM REGRET
As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. (2 Corinthians 7:9-10)
Everybody has their scars. As travelers in a broken world, nobody makes it out without some pain, some hurt, some mistakes.
But you don’t have to live there!
When we look at our lives and see clearly the wrongness of our sin, sometimes a sadness settles in and fills our hearts with guilt. We are ashamed of what we’ve done. We’re afraid of doing it again. We are anxious that people might find out and turn us away.
But God has a different plan for His children!
When the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to see your own sin, His purpose isn’t for you to be frozen by regret, but for you to find freedom through repentance!
Worldly grief will drive you down into isolation, but godly grief will spur you up into the presence of God and motivate you to lay your burdens down to be forgiven and healed.
Godly grief will help you deal with your failures by moving you to bring them to the cross of Christ. There, repentance will keep you from crucifying yourself over and over again for sins that Jesus already died for.
Don’t harden your heart and deny your sin, but don’t let the enemy use it to destroy you with regret, either. Take it to Jesus. Let Him redeem it. Let Him restore you. Let Him remind you of the forgiveness you have in Christ.
Run to Him in faith and surrender today as you walk in the hope of this truth: Jesus wants to free you from regret.
-Pastor Phillip
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