Have you ever had buyer's remorse, where you bought something that you really thought that you needed or wanted, then you get home and begin to regret your decision and action in making the purchase?
We can also have "life remorse" as well, a life where we cannot live our purpose and passion. We go to jobs that we hate, and we hang around people who are life and soul-draining. We make seemingly permanent decisions in temporary moments of pain. We chose a life path that others told us to take, and we are in a place of regret, resentment, and even anger at ourselves and the people we perceived to have led us here. How then can we get off this path without feeling that we have wasted years of our lives? One of my favorite scriptures holds the first clue; in his letter to the church in Rome, Paul writes to let them know that their decision to follow Christ was a good one despite what they were experiencing. He wrote that God would take everything we experienced; he would weave it together and use it for our good and his glory. You may say, how is that possible? I can tell you from personal experience that he can and he will. I couldn't figure out how he was going to take my abuse as a child, me being sexually assaulted, marrying an abuser, becoming a single parent, living in a shelter and then section 8 housing on public assistance, then buying a home that others said was impossible and now living almost debt-free, writing seven books, starting a woman's ministry reaching out to women who were and are just as I was. Launching a non-profit organization to reach young women to help them walk out their purpose on the earth. If I hadn't gone through the things that I had experienced, not all of my own decision, God could then uniquely position me.
The second is this before God can begin to work these things together, we have to come and bring them to him. Isaiah 55: 1-2 (NIV) says, "Come, all you who are thirsty come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good and you will delight in the richest of fare." God is saying that when you are feeling "life remorse," then come to him, bringing the feelings of being thirsty and hunger to him. When you feel like you have eaten enough, yet I still feel hungry, and you look around and think, is there more that I can consume because you felt like you had eaten all you could. God wants to satisfy the longing of your soul. The things that are outside of you and even inside of you; those limiting beliefs that say that you will always be in this place or that it's too late. Let me remind you that God caused a 90 plus-year-old woman to give birth to a nation and chose an 80-year-old man to begin working to lead a nation. It is never too late, and you are never too old.
