What is something that you regret? Something you would change? A burden you’ve been holding onto?
For a long time, one of my biggest regrets involved the way my running career ended. Running was a huge part of my life - I ran competitively in both high school and college and it formed a huge chunk of my identity. The peak of my career came in my junior year of college, when I ran well enough at the NCAA Division III Cross-Country Nationals to secure All-American honors. But even though I didn’t know it, that was the beginning of the end.
A few weeks after that cross-country season ended, I developed a stress fracture in my right femur. The long recovery from that injury, and the subsequent pushing to try to get back into some semblance of shape for my senior season, resulted in further setbacks and injuries. In effect, my college career fizzled to an inglorious end — no closure, no storybook ending after eight long years of labor, not even the chance to share with teammates in the struggles that came. Instead, what had become the bedrock of my life over the course of almost a decade all came tumbling down, and not by choice.
And it left a gaping hole in my psyche. For years, I avoided even thinking about the topic because it was too painful. I moved on with my life, with a massive scar the end result of the activity that had shaped so many of my memories in those formative years.
Regrets.
I want to share some words with you from the book of Philippians. Philippians was written by Paul, a foundational person in the early Christian church.
But Paul was someone who had reason to have some regrets. He was the last person anyone would have expected to become a Christian. When Paul first went to the disciples, they were afraid of him! They thought it was a trick.
The early church had started in Jerusalem. And almost immediately persecution of the church had also started. A guy named Stephen was the first person to be killed for his faith in Jesus Christ. And Paul was there. He watched the Sanhedrin drag Stephen outside the city and stone Stephen to death. And he approved of it. Supported it.
Acts says that Paul “was going everywhere to destroy the church. He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into prison.” (Acts 8:3)
Paul wanted the church gone. He was hunting down any Christian he could find and dragging them away to imprisonment and persecution and who knows what else. He wanted the church destroyed.
And then a personal encounter with Jesus Christ changed everything.
But you can’t tell me Paul didn’t have regrets. That he didn’t at times feel burdened. About the lives he wrecked. The pain he caused.
But here’s what he says in Philippians:
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal…
I want to know Christ. I want to be like Him. I haven’t done it yet, not completely, but one thing I do…
But how do you “forget what is behind”? Because there’s some stuff you don’t forget.
Paul wasn’t talking about forgetting, not exactly. But when he looked back on his life, he wasn’t seeing the sin and shame and regret. Paul was seeing his life through the light of the grace of Christ. And that grace changed everything.
Because this is what Jesus promised Paul and this is what he promises us: He says, “My grace is sufficient for you, because my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
My grace is enough for your regret. For your burdens and your pain and your mistakes and your anger and your failures and your hurt and your bitterness and your past. It’s enough. Because I work through your weakness.
And we can trust the truth of that because we have the example of Jesus Christ on the cross, in what seems like this ultimate display of weakness and failure and sin and death. And then three days later everything is turned upside down and God’s grace and his glory explode in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
God takes regret and makes it about his grace. He takes weakness and makes it about his power. And He can do that with you.
What if your past could be retold through Christ?
The way my running career ended was incredible painful. For a long time it was one of my biggest regrets. But if that hadn’t happened the way it did, I don’t know if I would be the Director of Programs at Camp Luther right now. I probably wouldn’t. Because the spring after all that happened was when I applied to work at camp for the first time. Because you see, I all of a sudden had some time and space to fill. I had a summer that wasn’t going to be crammed with training and building my mileage. I was lost, adrift…but God had a bigger plan.
You never know what God is going to use in your life. You never know. Sometimes people talk like God has this magical path for your life and if you can just find that magical path, your life will be perfect. You want to know the secret to knowing God’s plan for your life?
Follow Jesus. Follow Him through the good stuff, follow Him through the bad stuff. And let Him be enough.
-Kardia