I John 3:19-24 19This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence 20whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
21Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. 23And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
How many of us ever dredge up painful memories from the past about past mistakes, past failures, past tragedies, and think “If only…”
Regret is a powerful thing. How do we handle the regrets that return time and time again to haunt and cripple our lives, that hang like a heavy weight around our neck?
John is writing to the people assurance about the truth and power of the Christian faith that their joy may be complete, and as a part of his letter he says if our heart condemns us, we know that God is greater than our heart. This passage is to give us confidence before God when our heart condemns us, and means that we can appeal to God who is greater and more knowledgeable than we are. God knows all things and will be more merciful toward us than our own hearts.
And this is our hope, God is greater than our conscience. Our hearts condemn us about our past, but God can redeem the past. We cannot change the events of the past. What has happened has happened. There is no going back. But by God’s grace and through the work of the Spirit in our lives, we can change the feelings that go with the events so that the memory of them no longer cause us regret.
The Cross reminds us of what God can do with our past, for God took this instrument of torture and death and transformed it into an instrument that brings joy and life to you and me. God does not change the event but can change our understanding and feelings about the events of our past.
Sometimes people try to console us by saying, “Remember, we always learn from our mistakes.” Sometimes we do. But I am amazed at our capacity to repeat mistakes, to keep on making the same mistake over and over again and never learning a thing.
God actually uses our past mistakes, our past failures and past tragedies to shape our life today, to mold us into the kind of person God wants us to be. When we see our life from God’s perspective, we see that everything we have done wrong, every failure we have experienced, every tragedy we have endured has in some way contributed to making us God’s kind of person today.
When our hearts condemn us, when memories from the past rise up to put us down, to cause pain, let us remember that God is greater than our hearts and he not only redeems the past but gives us a future. Sometimes because of the past we feel we have no future. “I’ve made a mess of my life.” “I have forever lost the opportunity.” “Without him/her why go on living.”
But as long as we are teamed with God, we have a future and God calls us to move toward it. When we begin to follow Jesus and share our life with Him, we begin a never-ending adventure, an adventure so great that not even death can put an end to it.
The past may be strewn with all sorts of trash. God does not ask us to go back and pick it up. He asks us to bury it and leave it there where it belongs, and come follow Him. God has a future for you and me and wants us moving toward it unencumbered by the past.
God is greater than our hearts, but does not override the choice of our hearts. Will we hold on to the regrets of the past or will we chose to let go of them?
Imagine there is a rope around your neck with a knot in the back, and hanging from the rope is a millstone. Etched into that stone are the words, “If only.” Feel the weight pulling you down. Now imagine a strong hand comes from behind you and very simply unties the knot. The stone falls away and crumbles into dust. That is what God can do for you and me.
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope January 25, 1976
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles
I actually felt my shoulders release at the last paragraph! Miraculous...
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