No Reserves No Retreat No Regrets

70 • No Reserves, No Retreat, No Regrets: SIAFU Men’s Conference 2016

a. Heb. 9.13-14 – For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, [14] how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. b. 1 John 1.8-10 – If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. [9] If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. [10] If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 3. Refuse to be enslaved by your past; strain forward to what lies ahead – the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus , Phil. 3.13-14 – 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, [14] I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

The “DoubleWhammy” of Regret: Doing aWrong and Thinking about What I DidWrong

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

~ C. S. Lewis

You Can Alter the Effect of Your Memory’s Past

Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future. ~ Lewis B. Smedes