Regrets and Glory

We all have regrets, but don't you just hate thinking about them? We shove them back as far as we can...those painful reminders of mistakes, sins, and awful choices we have made.  We try to bury them deep, but they inevitably rise from 'who knows where' when we least expect them. They can pierce the soul and reduce us to tears in a heartbeat...and all without anyone around us knowing it. It cripples us inside.
We are a fallen race...capable of much evil.  Deeds done in secret and hurtful words spoken and unspoken and we wish we could take them back.
As far away from God as we may have lived, we are redeemable. God's word says so.  He is our only hope for a life that will matter for eternity.  He forgives. He teaches us how to forgive others and how to ask to be forgiven by those we have wronged.
When we accept Christ as Savior, believing that He died bearing our sins for us - we are forever changed.  We are made new...righteous in His sight...not because of anything we have done, but because of what Jesus did on our behalf.  The perfect Lamb was sacrificed that imperfect us might live and though we are a marred lot, though we are scarred and ugly, though we carry in us the sinful nature of man, we are now capable of bringing glory to the God of the universe. Why in the world would He want glory from us? He is all about glory. What better way to manifest it than to supply a Redeemer to a fallen world?  His love is great.  His ways are merciful.  He made a way for wretched us to live before Him, forgiven and clean. He does not see us as we were, but as righteous men and women, washed in His blood.

1 John 4:9-10  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 

1 John 3:18-20  Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. 

So I wonder if  you have trusted in the Lord for salvation.  Jesus is God's only Son, who willingly died for all who will believe on His name as Savior.  It was God's plan all along.  Nothing takes Him by surprise. Man did not sin so much that God one day said, "Wow, I better do something about this."  No, His plan was to magnify His own name and Being by offering life to the condemned...that's us. He is good. We need not live in the past.  Praise His name forever
This is the best reason for a day of THANKFULNESS.