Turning Real Regret into Real Prayer

This is a difficult and dark day for this nation. Everything that once made them proud is disastrous. However, remember that this is a prayer. The point of recalling this back to God is not to inform him. The point is that God will act.

The suffering has led to great sorrow.

Lamentations 5:15-18

They are bereft of joy. Their hearts are sick. The great Mount Zion is now taken over by jackals. The deep sorrow they feel is due to their own sin. This is something the nation has caused. They are having to deal with the sorrow of knowing that all of this pain is suffering at their own hand.

If you have ever had the spiritual life sucked out of you, then you understand the dilemma of Jeremiah. I know that joy is often a choice, and often it is a hard choice to make. We are rattled by the consequences of our own bad choices to the point that we cannot go on.

Winston Churchill, referring to the airmen who fought in the Battle of Britain, famously said, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few” (“Never”). Never have so many owed so much to so few. It could be said of Judah, “Never have so few lost so much for so many.” Really, they were God’s chosen people and are now the lonely city that sits on the hill. It’s sad. Sin came at the price of lost joy. It always does.

Lamentations 5:19-22

Jeremiah is praising God for his exalted state (v. 19). Yet he asks a blunt question: Why has God forgotten them? This is a remarkable question and at first blush is nonsensical. God is the one he is praying to; therefore, he thinks God can do something about this. It would seem you do not ask for a deity to act in his omnipotence while you are jeering at his forgetfulness. The idea, of course, is not memory. God, as he expressed in chapter 2, seems to be against them. This is the meaning of “forget” here. Not that they are out of God’s memory but out of God’s mercy. Why is God treating them like this? This plaintive cry by the crushed prophet reminds us that God is not toppled by our questions.

What Jeremiah wants is expressed in verses 21-22. He wants to be completely restored back to God. He suggests that maybe this is not possible because God may have totally written them off. Yet this can’t be true. Jeremiah already dealt with this in 3:31 when he wrote that the Lord will not reject them forever. His discipline is momentary and his mercies are new every morning.

So, what does the New Testament say about regret? It’s tempting to deal with regret in a cavalier way. We reckon that God’s grace is real and we’ve got to move on, so we bury the regret deep down and try not to think about it. After all, there’s nothing we can do to change the past. As Willie Nelson sang, “Nothing I Can Do about It Now.”

Jesus teaches us something different. He teaches us that regret is not something to be buried but to be wielded for good. Perhaps the most outstanding reminder is found toward the end of the Gospel of Luke (18:18-23).

A wealthy young urbanite asked Jesus a simple question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The answer Jesus gave is stunningly simple: he should keep the commandments. He replied that he had done that. Jesus then put his finger on the one area of his life where he was unwilling to yield: his finances. It seems he loved to keep the law, but he also loved money more than people. Money, as Jesus taught, was a resource to be invested. So, of course, Jesus goes there. When Jesus called for absolute obedience, the wealthy man went away sad. He had a heart full of regret. The regret was as real as it was useless.

It seems intentional that Luke would follow that story with the story of a man named Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-9). That man regretted being a thief. And, seemingly immediately, he leveraged the regret to gain repentance. He restored what he had stolen. Jesus’s observation was, “Today salvation has come to this house.” The salvation was not evidenced by the regret but by the repentance.

Christians do in fact embrace grace. Wallowing in self-pity is not an option. The effectiveness of a believer is not marked by how little he sins but how quickly he repents. This is the point. The Christian position is not mindless self-denial but to leverage regret for the glory of repentance.

Regret is powerful. In a way it is almost too powerful. The power of regret, combined with the emotion of grief, is not unlike a knife. If we are tied up and have a knife, we can hurt ourselves or cut ourselves free. Repentance is using the knife of regret to cut the ropes. In this way repentance leaves regret and moves to freedom. Regret, a fearful master, can be the pathway to freedom. Remorse, on the other hand, coddles regret in self-inflicting wounds. Repentance liberates; remorse wounds.

It’s strange really. Regret becomes a friend if it leads us to repentance. Regret for some is a dead end; for others, regret is the on-ramp to the road of repentance.

“For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly grief produces death” (2 Cor 7:10).