Run the race that is set before you
One of the ideas stuck in my head from years of listening to sermons is this one:
Regret is a form of unbelief. One of my weaknesses has been this tendency to look back at the past and think that the “old days” were better than these days ( an idea specifically prohibited in the book of Ecclesiastes). There is a glossing over the bad and remembering the good to the extent that I have difficulty being content in the “now.” The Lord has shown me this is sin because I am casting doubt on the goodness of His timing and questioning His leadership in my life. This came home to me in a new way when I was reading Hebrews 12 recently.
It goes like this: “ …let us also lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…” This truth landed on me in a new way and reminded me that I am not supposed to run the race that I ran in 2001 or in 2007. The Lord is calling all of us to run the race that is…. “ set before us.” We are to run this race with endurance and maybe one of the weights I need to drop is this idea of constantly regretting past decisions. This is such a paralyzing way to live and it robs a person of all joy in the present.
Therefore, if you find yourself saying…” why were the old days better than these ? “ , dismiss that idea as sin and move forward with your new station in life. Embrace Isaiah 43:18,19 which says:
Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it ? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.
Jesus affirms this idea in Luke 9:62 But Jesus said to him, “ No one after putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Even Paul recognized the need to exhort the Philippians: “ … but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on…” ( 3:13-14)
I thought that the Pixar film “ Up” was helpful in thinking through this as well. This man drags around his house most of the movie clinging to the memories of the past. Eventually he had to learn that it was time to “go have a new adventure.”
( He ends up dropping all the furniture out of the house too.)
Why does all this matter ? If I’m stuck in the past, then I will be ineffective for ministry in the present. I am not on this earth to reminisce about the “ good ol days,” but I am here to be God’s ambassador in the present. Time is running out for the world to repent of their sin and the fields are “white with harvest.” There is too much work to do to sit and wallow in self pity about things that “used to be.” How will I give an account to the Lord ( see Romans 14) for how I lived in 2011 ? What will my journal read Dec 31, 2011 … “ spent the year thinking about how I could have lived differently in 2009 ? “ Talk about a waste of time. I take seriously the Biblical idea that whether I live or die, I live to the Lord. I will have to give an answer for what I did with the time God gave me. I can’t see how it will be profitable for me to to tell the Lord someday: “ Well, here they are … here are all my regrets… I carried them for 40 years.” I am thankful for all the people that have been my friends over the years and I value the relationships that God has given me. At the same time, I have a strong desire to step into the “race” that is set before me right now.
Jeremiah 23:7
“ Therefore, behold the days are coming, “ declares the Lord, “ when they will no longer say, ‘ As the Lord lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt’,
8 but ‘ As the Lord lives, who brought up and led back the descendants of the household of Israel from the north land and from all the countries where I had driven them.’
Then they will live on their own soil.”
