Words With Friends - Regrets Phil 3:7-15 01/08/2012

Sermon 1-8-12 words w friends- regrets Phil 3:7-15
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in[a] Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, 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, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. 15 All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.

Words with friends
EGRETS
REGRETS

Two kinds of regrets
Things we did that we wish we would not have done
Things we did not do that we wish we would have

Regrets for what I did, and for what I did not do
For what I was, and for what I wasn’t

What were Paul’s regrets?
He killed Christians
He rejected God’s offer of a relationship
He wasted part of his life [what he didn’t do that he could have]

You may have regrets for
How you handled a divorce
How you acted in a marriage
That you got married in the first place
That you let down your kid
That you helped your kid too much

Regrets of mine
Stan hartzler in the jaw
Don Rhodenburger
Jim Shreives who left his job because of me

At church
A sermon I gave one time
An effort that I did not put out there
Letting someone down

That’s a little bit crazy isn’t it?

You can please some of the people all of the time
And all of the people some of the time
But you cannot please all of the people all of the time

Its all a little bit crazy- that’s the whole point
Living in the past is unhealthy. It is not what God wants us to do

Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it’s only for wallowing in.

The voice of regret
One of these voices comes from the painful past. It calls you to turn your head around and keep focused on your failures or sins. �How could you have done that?� the past keeps asking. Or it may preoccupy you with the failures and sins of others who hurt you.

Either way, the voice from the past makes it impossible to move ahead because it doesn�t let you even face the future. It doesn�t matter how carefully you analyze your shame, or how long you nurture the hurts you�ve collected, you�ll never have a better past.

We have to stop. We have to learn to forgive yourself

It is a powerful thing when you forgive someone elses sin

So god can forgive everyone else but you are not forgiven? Boy aren’t you special..

What if they ran around for the next 20 years apologizing over and over
Dude. Enough. Stop. You are wasting you life. Get off of it and get on with it.
Live!

I mentioned the voice of regret. there is another voice. The voice of our father calls out to you from heaven. It invites you to live. Here and now

Forgetting what is behind – I press forward to the high calling.
God has a plan for you. God has a work for you…

Possible illustration…………
Sarah Winchester
Sarah was rich. She had inherited twenty million dollars. Plus she had an additional income of one thousand dollars a day.
That's a lot of money any day, but it was immense in the late 1800s.
Sarah was well known. She was the belle of New Haven, Connecticut. No social event was complete without her presence. No one hosted a party without inviting her.
Sarah was powerful. Her name and money would open almost any door in America. Colleges wanted her donations. Politicians clamored for her support. Organizations sought her endorsement.
Sarah was rich. Well known. Powerful. And miserable.
Her only daughter had died at five weeks of age. Then her husband had passed away. She was left alone with her name, her money, her memories, ... and her guilt.
It was her guilt that caused her to move west. A passion for penance drove her to San Jose, California. Her yesterdays imprisoned her todays, and she yearned for freedom.
She bought an eight-room farmhouse plus one hundred sixty adjoining acres. She hired sixteen carpenters and put them to work. For the next thirty-eight years, craftsmen labored every day, twenty-four hours a day, to build a mansion.
Observers were intrigued by the project. Sarah's instructions were more than eccentric ... they were eerie. The design had a macabre touch. Each window was to have thirteen panes, each wall thirteen panels, each closet thirteen hooks, and each chandelier thirteen globes.
The floor plan was ghoulish. Corridors snaked randomly, some leading nowhere. One door opened to a blank wall, another to a fifty-foot drop. One set of stairs led to a ceiling that had no door. Trap doors. Secret passageways. Tunnels. This was no retirement home for Sarah's future; it was a castle for her past.
The making of this mysterious mansion only ended when Sarah died. The completed estate sprawled over six acres and had six kitchens, thirteen bathrooms, forty stairways, forty-seven fireplaces, fifty-two skylights, four hundred sixty-seven doors, ten thousand windows, one hundred sixty rooms, and a bell tower.
Why did Sarah want such a castle? Didn't she live alone? "Well, sort of," those acquainted with her story might answer. "There were the visitors..."
And the visitors came each night.
Legend has it that every evening at midnight, a servant would pass through the secret labyrinth that led to the bell tower. He would ring the bell...to summon the spirits. Sarah would then enter the "blue room," a room reserved for her and her nocturnal guests. Together they would linger until 2:00 a.m., when the bell would be rung again. Sarah would return to her quarters; the ghosts would return to their graves.
Who comprised this legion of phantoms?
Indians and soldiers killed on the U.S. frontier. They had all been killed by bullets from the most popular rifle in America -- the Winchester. What had brought millions of dollars to Sarah Winchester had brought death to them.
So she spent her remaining years in a castle of regret, providing a home for the dead.
You can see this poltergeist place in San Jose, if you wish. You can tour its halls and see its remains.
But to see what unresolved guilt can do to a human being, you don't have to go to the Winchester mansion. Lives imprisoned by yesterday's guilt are in your own city. Hearts haunted by failure are in your own neighborhood. People plagued by pitfalls are just down the street .. or just down the hall.
There is, wrote Paul, a "worldly sorrow" that "brings death." A guilt that kills. A sorrow that's fatal. A venomous regret that's deadly.
How many Sarah Winchesters do you know? How far do you have to go to find a soul haunted by ghosts of the past? Maybe not very far.
Maybe Sarah's story is your story.