I have regrets. I have bad decisions and missteps that have led me to where I am today. I cannot tell you how many times I have said to myself: “If only I could go back and redo things, knowing what I know now.” But I can’t. None of us can. God does not give us that option.
The only thing we can do is move forward from where we are right now. So, the best thing we can ask God is: “What would you have me to do now?”
I came to this conclusion one day when I was just taking stock of my life and considering where I was. I can be dangerously introspective and sometimes I can get very discouraged by it. It was in one of those “woe is me episodes” that the Holy Spirit laid that prayer on my heart: “Here’s where I am, Lord. What would you have me to do now?”
When I prayed that prayer, I had tremendous peace because it finally put my circumstances back in God’s hands where they belonged and put my trust back in Him and not myself.
It reminded me of the apostle Paul’s words:
Philippians 3:13-14 KJV
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, [14] I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
When God knocked Paul off his horse on the road to Damascus, you know what Paul didn’t ask? He didn’t ask: “Lord, what about all those believers I had killed? What about all those believers I forced to deny Christ? What about all those believers I put in jail?” He asked, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” Then he did it.
I can either spend the rest of my life peeling back the layers of my past failures like an onion and squander the rest of my days, or I can follow after God and trust my future to Him. God would have me to opt for the second choice. He gets more Glory that way. When it comes to my past, God wants me to learn from it not live in it.
Grace in Waves 