Have you ever wished you could go back and change something? I’m certain you have. Who hasn’t? Whether small or large, regrets can be discouraging. “If only I could go back and change [such and such], but I can’t…” This is what I recently told the Lord after seeing something more clearly– something I wish I’d handled differently in the past.
I said, “…but I can’t” and the Holy Spirit whispered to my heart, “But I can.”
You can? I know that God forgives us — “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions” (Psalm 103:12). And the Bible says, “Their sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more” (Hebrews 10:17). I know that when we confess mistakes, God is “faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). These are all present tense; what God has done and how He sees us now.
But can God actually go back in my past and fix something?
Before answering that, I suppose we have to remember that God is time. He’s the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He’s not confined to time and space like I am. So the first obvious answer is, yes God can move back and forth through time quite easily.
The answer to my question is not so much can God go back in time to fix something, but rather, that God can make all things new, healed, whole, restored, NOW. In other words, whatever it is that we have regrets about, God is able to REDEEM it.
Paul said in his letters to the Ephesians and Colossians, that time can be redeemed (Eph. 5:16, Col. 4:5). It means to buy back, buy up, to buy all that is anywhere to be bought, and not to allow a suitable moment to pass by unheeded but to make it one’s own.
I told the Holy Spirit, “I wish I could go back but I can’t.” He replied, “But I can” because that’s the power of redemption. “For all (that’s you, me, everyone) have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Too often, Christians stop here because this is the summation of our regrets. We know we fell short. BUT DON’T STOP THERE… we may fall short, but “we are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (verse 24). To be justified means to be set right.
I don’t care how God does it — whether He goes back in time and fixes something, or He makes it all new and right in this present moment — all I care about is that He redeems and sets things right, no matter how big my mistake. And He does this for ALL who call upon Him.
I know you have regrets. Me too. But put your faith today in the God of our redemption. He is good and His mercy endures forever!
