Big Idea - As human beings, we have been given the capacity to contemplate how things could be different. It is a great gift when looking forward, but it is a curse when looking back. Our future can and is shaped by choices, but the past is fixed, it cannot be changed or undone. There is no way to rewind and do it over. When we think of how things could be different if we had only made different choices, or done things differently in the past it can leave us feeling the pain of deep regret. What are we to do with these feelings. How do we cope with the reality that our life could be much different, things could be much better, if we had only been more careful, been smarter, made better choices? Is it possible to be delivered from a life of regret and the pain and sorrow that come with it?

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 7:10 that there are two different kinds of regret or sorrow, godly sorrow, and worldly sorrow. Godly sorrow is good and produces salvation. But, worldly sorrow ends in death. Peter and Judas are great pictures of each kind of sorrow at work and graphically portray the end of each. A sorrow that leads us to Christ is both saving and in the end, without regret! But, without Christ, it is a sorrow that only consumes our life and ends in misery and death. Praise God for the work of Christ who sets us free from sin and from the grief it causes in our life! Godly sorrow is without regrets because it causes us to see our need for Christ and to turn to Him in repentance. So, we can rejoice in it because it is a gift that brings us to Christ, it makes us humble enough to see our need for Him, and through His cross, every regret is redeemed and our life is restored according to God's good purpose. Worldly regret is too self-centered and too full of pride to have any saving value and it drives us only to despair.