Sinful reflections?

 

When sin entered the world, its form took being like God in knowing good and evil. This means having the ability to decide what is right and what is wrong. It is sin because it threw the human race into making our own decisions about everything — rather than relying on God to guide us.

Of course sin takes many forms. It can be severe if it involves the right or wrong of robbing a bank, cheating on income tax, gossiping about a neighbor, retaliating against a person who slanders me, and so on. But it can also be subtle, such as sharing a story that makes me look better than I am, or patting myself on the back for doing well after God blesses my actions, or berating myself for making a mistake instead of confessing the error and being forgiven.

Today’s devotional is about those last two: lifting up myself for obeying God, or beating myself up with regret after a failure. Both are self-centered and both keep me from moving on. The reading quotes from an unnamed book: “Never indulge, at the close of an action, in any self-reflective acts of any kind, whether of self-congratulation or of self-despair. Forget the things that are behind, the moment they are past, leaving them with God.”

Since I often ‘indulge’ self-reflection at both ends of that spectrum, this is something to consider. The NT says this about how to think about the past:

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained. (Philippians 3:8–16)

Paul did not dwell on the past, good or bad. He thanked God for His salvation, put all past accomplishments on the garbage heap because they had no value in his relationship with God, and pressed on. He forgot the past and developed an eternal perspective, considering the goal of becoming like Jesus as the most important way to think. He knew that all sins were forgiven, and that all successes were because of Jesus, not his own doing. His mind was not occupied with regret or with self-congratulations.

This temptation comes to pastors and all those who serve Christ. The devotional author stresses the need to refuse to indulge in such reflections and instead turn from them at once and refuse to think about our work at all, leaving it with the Lord to overrule the mistakes and to bless it as He chooses. I agree. How much time and energy have I wasted in “I should have…” or “That worked well…” thoughts instead of “What’s next, Lord?”

PRAY: Jesus, Monday is a good day to start fresh. Please grant me not only forgiveness for selfish thinking after Your blessings on what happens, but also for regrets in missing opportunities by wasting valuable time in all self-centered thinking. Far better to be praising You, talking with You, and thinking about the needs of others.