I regret not spending more time enjoying God and instead chasing petty things. I regret not living out my faith more genuinely. I regret not be more patient, loving, caring, thoughtful, strong, righteous, adventurous, holy, compassionate and so forth. I regret the sin in my life. Oh how I have lots of regrets. And I hate each one of them.
I so desire to live my life in such a way that at the end of my life, at that final end of the night, that I have no regrets. I want to live in a way in which regret is not part of my vocabulary, nor part of my thought process. But I know I'm a sinner. I know that I will fall. I know that I will let other's down, including myself. I know that I in no way shape or form can live up to God's standard of holiness. And so I will live with regret. But I will not live defeated.
I think of Paul in Romans 7:14- 25
14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.b For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
