Regrets - don't pack them!

So our summerseries continues….. I hope that you have been following along. Maybe it’s been the three audio podcasts or, given that I have been away from the pulpit a few weeks due to our Devotions to St Anne celebration and this weekend the Steubenville Conference with our teens, through this Blog. Either way, make sure to follow along – because Making Sunday Matter is not a slogan, it’s a life commitment we accepted at Baptism and Confirmation – in essence it is what Discipleship in Christ is all about – cause without honouring Sunday by being in God’s House – well – we are saying the Lord’s Day is just like any other day – and well that is just not true!

So I am not sure about you but sometimes I have regrets. Things I wish I could do over again, handle differently, say in a new way, or do over. I know very little about golf, and if you have ever seen me play you would agree, but the few games I have played – well – I got the nickname “Mulligan” – because I always wanted to “do it over.”

As we “Pack OurBags” we find ourselves at times wishing we had “put something in” or not over packed and could “take something out” during this journey of life toward our final destination. Our second reading for this Lord's Day is taken from the end of the eighth chapter of Paul’s magnificent letter to the Romans. In this great book of the Bible, we learn that in Christ, God has disclosed His providential plan whereby He intends to reconcile all things to Himself. I don’t know about you, but those words always give me comfort and peace. 

Do you feel weighed down today in condemnation and shame from past mistakes? It’s time to make an exchange. Because of what Christ has done, you can walk in God’s mercy every day. Instead of living in regret, you can live in peace. You don’t have to sit on the sidelines of life and pay penance for your past mistakes. God has a gift of righteousness to cover you. Nothing you’ve done in the past is too much for the mercy of God. But Mercy is something we must be willing to “pack” and it is the only things we should “carry around.”

As long as you’re living in regret, focused on the negative things of the past, it’s going to keep you from all that the Lord has ahead for you. You’ve got to let go of what didn’t work out. Let go of the hurts and pain. Let go of your disappointments and failures. 

You can’t do anything about the past, but you can do something about right now. Whether it happened 20 years ago or 20 minutes ago, let it go and move forward. If you keep bringing negative baggage from yesterday into today, it will slow done your progress toward your future. It is like packing too much and find that the weight of the baggage is slowing down your arrival for where you need to be. You may have had an unfair past, but you don’t have to have an unfair future. You may have gotten off to a rough start in life, but it’s not how you start that matters. It’s how you finish.

To help you do this, let me give you three strategies for the first ten minutes of your day.

1. Choose to serve the Lord with all your heart.

Every morning we have the opportunity to choose who we are going to serve; who we are going to live to please that day. Every morning we can consecrate ourselves to the Lord. You might pray something like this: Lord, You are my highest desire. I want to serve You and please You in every aspect of my life today. This is the day You have made. I choose to rejoice and be glad in it! Give Him your all, seek to discern His will and way daily. Pray for faithfulness and wisdom when moments of choice and decision come, and trust that His Spirit will show the way!

 2. Choose to be happy and full of joy.

Joy and gladness don’t just happen to us — we choose them! We may not feel happy or joyful, but when we take on happiness, live in joyful ways, our feelings will begin to respond to our choices. So recount God’s faithfulness to you. Thank Him for all He has done, and remember the ways that He has delivered you in the past. Don’t focus on what you haven’t got — be grateful for what you have. Put a song in your heart, and sing it all day long. Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

3. Choose to look to God to provide for your needs.

God says we are to ask Him for our daily bread. He never runs out of what we need! When the children of Israel gathered manna, there was always enough. They were never lacking, and didn’t have to work for it. But they did have to look to Him to provide it, and receive it from His hand. Trust God to meet your needs at the beginning of every day.

We live without regret not because everything is perfect, and not because there are not things to discourage us, but we live without regret because God will provide. In Christ Jesus, all things become new and today's disappointments become tomorrow's opportunities. Today's failures transform themselves in tomorrow's lessons. Today's set back and hurdles, appear tomorrow as new roads and pathways to an even better way that He has planned for us. 

That is the great treasure spoken of in our Gospel, to live in His peace! What great joy there is when we finally find a precious thing that we have long been seeking. This treasure might be finding our vocation, landing the perfect job, the birth of a child, or making peace with the past. Our desire for this long-sought pearl helps us to better understand the heart of God. Made in His image and likeness, but given complete free will, we are His treasure. He longs for the return of our love just as the merchant waited to find the pearl of great price. We are that unique and precious creation that Jesus is willing to sacrifice everything for. He waits and looks for us, and welcomes us with great joy and love.

Sometimes God's love is found that way. There's the saying, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Sometimes in the course of our everyday lives, something happens that vividly and surprisingly summons us to union with God. We realize, in a flash, what it's all about. We weren't particularly looking for it, but it found us.

That's what Jesus is getting at today. As you pack for the walk through the fields of life, be open to the inrushing of grace, when you least expect it. And when it comes, give up anything that holds it back. So as we keep packing - well, pack the treasure which is His peace. So go forth and live it now -  "God's got it" - live in His peace, not your regrets!

Our Summer Series - Pack Your Bags - reaches pivotal question!

“If I allow fear to take me over, I won’t be able to make the
moves that I need to… to keep going.”

Fear is one of the most powerful forces there is. Fear can paralyze and fear can isolate.

Fear is used every day to control and contain us. As subtle as an Old Spice commercial that said, “You don’t want to be old and single, do you?”, or as loud as physical dominance.

When Jesus rose from the dead – that changed everything, including the opportunity for us to live with absolute freedom. Freedom is the antonym of fear.  God said, your shortcomings, your mess ups, your failures–none will be counted against you. Who you are will never be affected by what you do. But we don’t trust Him. We still fear that, somehow, our mess-ups affect how God sees us and affect our value in some way. So we tread warily through life.

It’s as if God promised He’s removed all the prickles from the grass and yet, we tip toe around, in case He missed some. Life is not meant to be tip toed through. Life is meant to be run with freedom. No chains, no shackles, no tip toeing.  

Galatians 5:1 | Freedom in Christ
So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free,
and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.

As we begin to trust God more and more, to step out from behind fear and run, we’ll begin to see life in a way we never have before, the way God designed it. This summer we have been working through a message series called “Pack YourBags.”  We have taken three major steps in the journey asking ourselves some important questions like:

First, in this season of heat which is Summer – are we a Thermometer or a Thermostat? Do we just talk about the heat around us, (the stuff that makes us uncomfortable) like a thermometer would in telling the temperature, or do we seek to lives a life which  – like a thermostat would – seeks to change the temperature as we seek to live in the comfort of Christ.

Then we moved forward a bit, and checked out our heart by asking - do we live in humility? Seeking above all to live in humility with God. See we don’t set the temperature, we seek to let Christ do that, but we have to have a humble heart to let that happen.

That message then led us toward asking the question – how is our heart? What influences are taking us into unhealthy patterns in our life – are we prepared to make the changes we need in our lifestyle to have a healthy spiritual heart.  Make sure to check out these messages.

So we have arrived at this juncture, now almost halfway into the summer. If we are willing to take note of the temperature of our life, make the changes we need, reflect humbly of heart as we do, and live with a healthy spiritual heart – then it’s time to look at the topic of freedom and some ways to shed the fear that holds us back.  This pursuit is a lot like going to the mailbox and finding the envelope with the letter we have been waiting for, or been worried about.

Over our lifetime, we all have received letters.  Some letters are great, we find ourselves saving them and reading them over and over again.  Some letters are more challenging, they hit a chord with us that feels challenging or convicting.  Those letters we want to toss away, even though in the back of our minds what the person said was probably right. 

God’s word is a letter which has arrived for us this Lord’s Day and in essence it asks – what is holding you back from dropping the fear and walking in faith?  Sometimes its our past, or we are apprehensive about the future, or we are unimpressed with our present path. Each of us must remember the past with gratitude, live the present with passion, and embrace the future with hope. A grateful memory of the past: not archaeology. We don't go digging for our regrets. Rather we embrace a passion for maintaining ever alive and young our first love, Who is Jesus. This then leads us to live in Hope, with the knowledge that Jesus is with us and guides our steps – that is at essence the core of freedom and friendship with Christ.

Today the word “friend” has become a bit overused. In our daily lives, we run into various people whom we call “friends”, but that is just a word we say. Within virtual communications, “friend” is one of the most frequently found words. Yet we know that superficial knowledge has little to do with that experience of encounter or closeness evoked by the word “friend”.

When Jesus speaks of His “friends”, He points to a hard truth: true friendship involves an encounter that draws me so near to the other person that I give something of my very self. Jesus says to His disciples: “No longer do I call you servants… but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn 15:15). He thus establishes a new relationship between man and God, one that transcends the law and is grounded in trust and love. At the same time, Jesus frees friendship from sentimentalism and presents it to us as a responsibility that embraces our entire life: “Greater love has no man than this - that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13).

We become friends, then, only if our encounter is more than something outward or formal, and becomes instead a way of sharing in the life of another person, an experience of compassion, a relationship that involves giving ourselves for others.

It is good for us to reflect on what friends do. They stand at our side, gently and tenderly, along our journey; they listen to us closely, and can see beyond mere words; they are merciful when faced with our faults; they are non-judgemental. They are able to walk with us, helping us to feel joy in knowing that we are not alone. They do not always indulge us but, precisely because they love us, they honestly tell us when they disagree. They are there to pick us up whenever we fall.

So the key to freedom - to not living in fear but rather grabbing hold of faith - is friendship with Christ. As you continue your summer journey and “packing your bags” – how is your friendship with Jesus? Can I suggest three methods to answer that questions honourably and honestly

• First, do you speak daily with Him? 
• Do you visit Him weekly on His day at Mass? 
• Do you desire to grow in knowing Him regularly? 

No friendship can grow in isolation (isolation is the breading ground of fear). Daily conversation with Christ is needed – remember that appointment with God. No friendship can grow without communication (not talking a tool of fear). No friendship can become all it is meant to be without “meeting up”, so on the Lord’s Day do you visit Jesus at His Home and share in the Eucharistic Meal which is the Mass. This connection with Jesus on the Lord’s see should not be solely seen as an obligation, but an opportunity for friendship with Christ which leads to trying to expand and grow in knowing Him, loving Him and serving Him (staying still is the motion of fear).

As we keep moving forward – would you be willing to ask those questions and "take the temperature" on your friendship with Jesus? Make sure you can state whether "I filled with fear or freedom" as I move forward.  So keep packing your bags – for we are all on the journey to a great destination together.