If Only...

I know that I as well as everyone else at one time or another have made the comment, “If only!” If only I would have finished school or college, if only I would have majored in something else, if only I would have never married this person and married another, if only I wouldn’t have gotten married, if I was only healthy, if I was more attractive or more popular, if only I had this job, if only I could lose weight, if only I would have never said…, if only I would have turned right instead of left. I think you get the point.

Let’s say for a minute you could go back and do it all again. Would you? What if you could go back, but you had no control on where, the time frame or who your family would be. Would you? Even if we could go back and change something we don’t like, who’s to know if that choice would be any better? Are you willing to take that chance?

Well the truth is we can’t go back. What is behind us is gone forever and there is nothing we can change about it. However, we have the ability to change the present, but not the future. Will we continue to worry and fret over matters we can never change and move on and start working on what we can?

I’m not talking about positive thinking; I’m talking about changing your focus. If you were to drive down the freeway constantly looking in your review mirror, then disaster is inevitable. It’s no different in your life. We learn from the past, live in the present and plan for the future.

I recently watched this movie called Mr. Destiny. He hated his life and regretted one fatal error he believed he had made in his past. If only he would have hit that ball. He was given the opportunity to go back and change his life. Now he was a successful president of the company he was recently fired from and now he was very wealthy. From a human point of view this was paradise. Then soon he learned that there were problems in this life too, only bigger. He realized his other life wasn’t so bad after all.

Do we keep whining about what choices or things that happened to us in the past or do we do something to make the best of what we have? It’s really not a matter of changing your mind, although it starts there, but it’s really a matter of changing your heart not as much as your circumstances. A good place to start is, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.” Philippians4:11

When we exhaust all our efforts, then we realize it was Jesus all the time. The Bible talks about vain imaginations. Simply put it means, “dwelling on things that are worthless and a waste of time.” I think Paul puts it best, Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; 2 Corinthians 10:5 Happy New Year!