I'm not really sure if I am posting this in the right section but I wanted to share this with everyone. I got this in my email and I read through it and it just really hit home for me cause I look back on my life and I see how I have been everyone but myself and now I ask God daily to show me who I am. Because I am tired of being everyone else, I want to be me. In this process of trying to find out and learning who I am, I am faced with many regrets. And believe me when I say it is VERY painful.
Growing through regret
by John Fischer
Where does character come from? For one thing, it comes from hardship. “We can rejoice, too,” said Paul, “when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they are good for us – they help us learn to endure. And endurance develops strength of character in us ….” (Romans 5:3-4)
I think it is safe to say there is no way to have character without pain, failure, and hardship. Sometimes we short-circuit what God is trying to build in us because we avoid these things or we refuse to face up to our shortcomings or our sins.
In the movie Big Kahuna, a young Baptist fresh out of Christian college played by Peter Facinelli is on his first business trip with two co-workers played by Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito. The young Baptist is admirable, working hard to stay true to his Christian convictions amidst Spacey’s foul-mouthed cynicism and DeVito’s honest questions about God. Though the young Baptist’s faith is sincere, it is untested, and as Danny DeVito points out, it hasn’t yet touched the whole of his life. The character played by DeVito is actually closer to truly knowing God than the young Baptist in that he is searching and asking all the right questions.
In a final scene, DeVito makes a stinging observation of the young Christian. He tells Bob that in his opinion, though he is sincere, he has no character, and the reason he has no character is that he hasn’t lived long enough to regret anything. To which Bob replies, as I would have at his age because I had the same perception of myself then, “You mean I have to do something I’ll regret in order to have character?”
“No Bob,” says Danny DeVito, “you have plenty of things to regret. You just don’t know what they are.”
We are all in the process of finding out who we are in Christ, but part of that also includes finding out just how far we have to go to get there. It’s a painful process, but the more we avoid it, the more we deny the very thing that will build character in us and cause us to grow. We grow from facing the truth about ourselves, even when that truth is something regrettable. There is no shortcut to the character that comes from the pain of confession and the joy of being saved. And this is a daily occurrence.
Pray that God will open your eyes to the things that will build character into your life. Ask God to show you what he wants to teach you about yourself today, even if it’s something you might regret.