Dwight Fletcher | If you could go back ... would you?

If you were given one chance to go back in time and change a single moment in your life, would you take it? This week, as we celebrate Emancipation Day and Independence Day, it’s natural for us to reflect on freedom.

We rightly celebrate freedom from oppression and honour the resilience of those who came before us. Yet, freedom isn’t only something that happens to a nation. Sometimes the hardest freedom to experience is personal: the freedom to stop living in yesterday.

I thought about this as I watched a movie recently. It’s a popular superhero film, but there was something deeply human about the situation. In it, a young man is still carrying the weight of his mother’s death. When he gains the ability to go back in time, he uses that power to try and keep his mother alive. This creates more problems than it solves and, as I sat there, I thought that the challenge this superhero was facing is a real experience everyone faces. The challenge of regrets.

Most of us carry at least one moment we’d like to erase – a conversation that went wrong, a relationship that ended badly, a financial decision we regret, or an opportunity we let slip away.

We also see this in Scripture. One of Jesus’ disciples, one of the leaders of the early church, the Apostle Peter, had regrets. On the night before Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter boldly declared that he would never abandon his Lord. Even if everyone else walked away, Peter insisted he would remain faithful. Yet, only a few hours later, standing around a fire and questioned by strangers, he denied even knowing Jesus, not once, but three times (Matthew 26:69-75 NLT).

When the rooster crowed, Peter realised exactly what he had done, and the weight of that failure must have been overwhelming.

Perhaps you’ve never denied Christ, but most of us know what it feels like to disappoint ourselves. We know what it’s like to look back and think, “I should have known better.” Regret has a way of replaying our worst moments like a film we never asked to watch again.

The danger isn’t that we experience regret. Regret can actually serve a purpose. It reminds us that something wasn’t right. It can lead us to reflection, repentance, growth and ultimately, freedom. The real danger comes when we refuse to move beyond it.

Peter’s failure changed the way he saw himself. Rather than stepping into the future Jesus had prepared for him, Peter returned to what was familiar. In John 21, we read that Peter went back to fishing, which was his old profession before he became a follower of Jesus.

Regret has a way of doing that to us. It convinces us that one mistake defines our entire story. It whispers that, because we failed once, we are no longer qualified to dream, to lead, to trust again, or to believe God still has good things ahead.

But that isn’t the message of the Gospel. The Gospel is, at its heart, a message of freedom. Not only freedom from sin, but freedom from the shame, guilt and regret that keep us chained to our past. The past is a wonderful teacher, but it is a terrible place to live.

This is why we’re starting a new series on regret. We’re getting free from the shame of our past and walking into the power of Christ for a brighter future. So, I want to leave you with one question: Are you spending more time looking backwards than forwards?

Perhaps today is the day to stop wishing you could rewrite yesterday and begin trusting God with tomorrow for you and for our nation. See you next week!