The Cure For Regret

Read: John 21:15-19
In those days, Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples. - Acts 1:15

Remorse deprives many Christians of the joy that should be theirs. A man in his middle years has withdrawn from the people in his church because he feels so bad about his past - a sin that broke up his home. an elderly woman needs counseling because she can't forget an affair she had more than 50 years ago. A young woman sees a psychiatrist because she can't forgive herself for having had an abortion.

If anyone ever had good reason for allowing the memory of a grievous sin to put him on the shelf, it was Peter. He had been such a coward, fleeing Gethsemane at Christ's arrest, and then denying three times that he knew the Lord. Later, he felt so bad that he wept bitterly. Yet he did not allow his remorse over past failures to make him ineffective in his service for Christ. He accepted the Lord's forgiveness, and he received new hope from Jesus' commission, "Feed my sheep". In Acts 1:15 we find him back in his role as the leader of the disciples. By taking Jesus' words of forgiveness to heart and by forgiving himself, he put the past under the blood of Christ.

When we confess our sin, we can leave it with Christ and forget it. Then we can move on and serve Him. We need never let remorse remove out joy. - Herb Vander Lugt

The vain regrets of yesterday
Have vanished through God's pardoning grace;
The guity fear has passed away,
And joy has come to take its place.  - Ackley

Christians should seek to erase from their memory the sins God has erased from their record.