Regret has a way of showing up uninvited. It sits quietly in the back of our minds, reminding us of the decision we wish we could take back, the words we wish we hadn't said, the year we wish we could live over. In week two of our series on regret, we look honestly at why we make the decisions we do, and we ask a question that might surprise you: what if chasing your own happiness is actually the thing causing your regret, not preventing it? Happy Is Not the Goal We live in a culture obsessed with personal happiness, but the word itself comes from an old root meaning "chance" or "luck." True happiness, in that original sense, depends entirely on circumstances we cannot control. Chasing it is like chasing the wind. Solomon proved this the hard way. In Ecclesiastes 2, he built houses, planted vineyards, gathered wealth, hired musicians, and denied himself nothing his eyes desired. His conclusion in verse 11 is sobering: "Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind." The wisest man who ever lived tried every path to happiness and came up empty. If personal happiness were the answer, he would have found it. Looking Up and Looking Out So if the pursuit of our own happiness leads to regret rather than away from it, what's the better question? Scripture points us somewhere unexpected. In Deuteronomy 24:5, God gave newly married men a year free from other duties, not for their own comfort, but "to bring happiness to the wife he has married." And in Jesus's parable of the bags of gold, the faithful servants who put their master's resources to good use hear him say in Matthew 25:21, "Come and share your master's happiness." In both cases, happiness comes as a byproduct of serving someone else, not as the goal itself. That leads us to the real question to ask before any decision: whose happiness does this decision serve? Mine, or God's and others'? A Better Kind of Wisdom This doesn't mean we never make decisions for ourselves. We have to eat, rest, and care for our own needs so we're able to serve others well. But if every decision is ultimately about our own happiness, we're setting ourselves up for the very regret we're trying to avoid. The wise path is the one that looks outward: toward God and toward the people He's placed in our lives. Jesus himself is the model for this. He didn't come to secure his own comfort; he lived, died, and rose again looking out for us. When we trust him and follow his example, we find something happiness alone could never give us: a life with purpose that doesn't collapse when circumstances change. The Path Beyond Regret Here's the good news in all of this: God doesn't just want to help us make wiser decisions going forward, he also offers healing for the regrets we already carry. That healing starts with a relationship with Jesus Christ, whose death and resurrection secure our future and free us to stop striving for a happiness we were never meant to control. Wisdom says it's not about our happiness, it's about the happiness of the God we serve and the people we're called to love. This week, take a moment to reflect on your own decision making. Are you asking, "Will this make me happy?" or are you asking, "Whose happiness does this decision serve?" Talk with your family about the difference between the two, and consider one decision this week you could make for someone else's good rather than your own comfort. If this episode encouraged you, share it with a friend who might be wrestling with regret of their own, and join us next week as we continue exploring God's plan for a life beyond it.
Regret can be defined as the pain we feel in the present when we wish we could rewrite the past. Now, now some people deny, may deny the presence of that pain, but the reality is that anyone with a sober sense of self-awareness will feel it because we have all of us had to make decisions. There's absolutely no escaping it that life is one, from one perspective, is one long drawn out series of decisions. Every day, we have to make decisions. We have to decide when to get up, what to wear, what to eat, who we're going to be nice to and speak with, and who we're going to ignore. We also have to decide if we're going to prioritize God or exclude Him. Now, some of the decisions we make are going to be good, and some of them are going to be bad, but we need to understand that every decision has consequence and comes with the potential for regret. And since none of us are perfect decision makers, the fact is we all have regrets. Now, this series that we started last week is about God's plan for dealing with regret. On one hand, we resist or minimize future regrets by applying His wisdom in our decision making. That's part of it. On the other hand, we unburden our souls of the regret, our regrets, through His grace and mercy. See, it's imperative that we find healing because, as Catherine Mansfield said, regret is an appalling waste of energy. You can't build on it. It's only good for wallowing in. That's true. Regret left un-mended will only bog us down and prevent us from moving forward to what God has called us to do. Now, the good news is that because God is merciful, He provides a path to recovery. Okay, beyond regret, there is healing. He knows that if we find healing beyond regret, we are free to move on with the fruitful, purposeful lives for which we were created. Otherwise, we are stuck. Now, the first part of this series is about God's plan for prevention. Okay, how do we discover and apply God's wisdom to decision making? Now, I am proposing through this series that the best way to do that is by asking a series of questions about our decisions. And those questions will help us uncover God's wisdom for what we should be about, for the decisions we should make. Now, last week, if you remember, we discussed the first question that leads to wisdom. Here it was, can I trust what I am telling me? Okay, can I trust what I'm telling me? We need to ask that question because the Scripture teaches us that our hearts are deceitfully wicked. They are deceitful above all else and beyond cure. And we can't always trust where our hearts are leading us. So when we find ourselves trying to talk ourselves into something we won't be able to talk ourselves out of, we need to stop and ask the question, can I trust what I'm telling me? Can I trust it? That's the first question. Now we get to the second question. And before we get there, I have to tell you that I really struggled with this one. In particular, I struggled with the wording of the question. What I thought I was going to propose, the question I thought I would share is this. Will this really make me happy? Will this, my decision, really make me happy? But as soon as I put pen to paper and read that question out loud, I regretted it. Sometimes we make poor decisions. And here's why. And we all need to understand this in a world that is just awash with the push to happiness. We need to understand this. Happiness is a welcome companion, but a tyrannical master. It is a great addition, but it is a terrible aim. If we consistently make decisions that serve our happiness, then we are consistently serving our demise. As John Stuart Mill observed, ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. It's so true. At first I thought the inclusion of the word really, as in, will this really make me happy? Would direct our thinking to higher levels of happiness, that those things that are truly beneficial for us. But I just couldn't get around the fact that if we are driven by the pursuit of our own happiness, we are setting ourselves up not for fewer regrets, but for more. And there are two reasons for that. First, the pursuit of happiness seeks to control things that are not ours to control. The pursuit of happiness seeks to control things that are not ours to control. The word happiness comes from an Old Norse word, which is hap. And hap means chance, luck, or fortune. It's the same root behind the words happen, perhaps, and hapless. So what we realize is that a happy person, according to the true meaning of the word, is simply someone who has encountered good luck. OK, good things have happened to them. Fortunate. They have been fortunate. They have enjoyed good fortune, and therefore they are happy. Now that word infers to us the state of happy. Our state of happiness is completely dependent upon circumstances. OK, your happiness is dependent upon your circumstances. So to pursue happiness is to attempt to control our environment or our circumstances. And truth be told, that's not our department. That's not for us to decide. What we control is our response to circumstances, but not the circumstances themselves. Trying to play God over our circumstances is not the way to happiness, but madness. Why? Because we are not in control. The second reason we should not ask if a decision will really make us happy is because of the way we collectively or culturally view happiness. OK, you know about the founding fathers, right? And they, in explaining why we wanted we were declaring our independence from Great Britain, they wrote these famous words. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, I think it's safe to say that not many of us would argue with the idea that we are created with the right to pursue happiness. OK, the problem is that the way we view happiness today is very different from the way our founding fathers viewed it and why they wrote that statement. The unalienable right granted to all men created equal by God, listen closely to what I'm about to tell you, was the freedom to pursue happiness for the greater good. OK, happiness as a greater good. The idea was not that people would pursue individual happiness, but corporate or community happiness. In our founding fathers view, the pursuit was hampered by the monarch in England, right? So the people needed to be free to govern themselves and establish happiness by the people for the people. Happiness was not my unalienable right. It was our unalienable right. Do you see the difference? But today, happiness is altogether different. For them, happiness was pursued looking outward. For us, it's pursued looking inward. For them, happiness was found through contribution. For us, happiness is found through consumption. It's not what I contribute, it's what I take. Now, let me illustrate the difference. We begin, I think rightfully so, with the assumption that everyone, unless they're just crazy, wants to find happiness and fulfillment in their work. OK, right? Everyone wants to find happiness and fulfillment in their work because we work so much. Now, if happiness is found through contribution, that person would be happy in their work if it enabled them to provide for their family. OK, they were working for the greater good. It didn't matter if they were fulfilled in the task that was involved in their work. What mattered was that their families were provided for through their work. And if that happened, then they would be happy. OK, that's where happiness came from. It was an outward view of happiness. Now, by the way, that was the view of all human history until about 10 minutes ago. Now, I have to be fulfilled by what I do if I'm going to be happy at work. OK, for the first time in human civilization, the pinnacle of happiness has been disassociated from the greater good. Instead, it is today associated with the psychological happiness of the individual. So, in our twisted, self-absorbed culture, we pursue personal happiness without much regard to other people. And if I can't be happy, then, and here's this is key, if I can't be happy, then the community needs to change around me for me. That's different. Now, proof of this change is the rise of what we now call hate speech, which is understood to be, and I want you to think through this with me, it's really important to understand, hate speech is understood to be words that oppress the individual and block them from their psychological happiness. Hate speech is words that oppress the individual because it blocks them from their own psychological happiness. For example, let's take a really hot button issue that I think you've probably all heard about. And I'm not doing this to be controversial or to make a statement. This is just, we've got to understand this. If someone objects to boys playing girls sports, their objection is labeled hate speech. They are accused of hating transgender people because they don't want them to be happy. Right? But the truth is for most, if not all of all people, their objection has nothing to do with hatred. It is a greater good issue. They're not thinking of the welfare. They are thinking of the welfare of the 99.98% of girls, as opposed to the welfare of the .02% of boys who want to play girls sports. Okay? Now, I realize that is an extreme example of the phenomenon of psychological happiness. But the reason I bring it up is this. The fact that this is even an argument in our culture proves my point. Okay? We have bought into the notion that happiness of the individual is the path to finding and fulfilling a meaningful life. This notion that we must protect and promote the individual above the community has filtered down to us and it influences what we value and the way we think and live. All of us. Here's the point. If you make decisions based upon what is going to make you happy, then you do not prevent regret. You cause it. The truth is that the pursuit of personal or psychological happiness is to the detriment of the greater good. It will not make your life meaningful, but only move you further away from what does. Your personal happiness is often a byproduct of a meaningful life, but it is never the aim of one. It can't be because happiness is tied to circumstances that we do not and cannot control. Now, this was the point that was made by the writer of Ecclesiastes, who has traditionally been understood to be identified with Solomon. Okay, the wisest man who ever lived. Now, Ecclesiastes is a book about the fact that he tried everything he believed could and should bring him happiness. And in chapter two, if you have your Bibles, I want you to turn there to Ecclesiastes chapter two. If you turn in the middle of your Bible, you find the book of Psalms and then Solomon's book Proverbs, Song of Solomon, and then Ecclesiastes will follow. In chapter two, he actually gives a full report of what he learned as he pursued his own personal happiness. Now, as we read it, what I want you to note is the number of times he uses the word myself. Okay, Ecclesiastes chapter two, beginning in verse one. I wanted to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during the few days of their lives. I undertook great projects. I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made reservoirs of water to water groves of flourishing trees. I bought male and female slaves and had all other slaves who were and had other slaves who were born in my house. I also own more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me. I amassed silver and gold for myself in the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired male and female singers and a harem as well, the delights of a man's heart. I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this, my wisdom stayed with me. Now, let's just dispense of what I hope you're wondering about. How could he say in all this, my wisdom stayed with me? Well, he was not saying that in making all of those decisions and doing all of those things for himself, that he was operating by God's wisdom. What he meant was that he was keeping an eye on what his pursuits were teaching him. Okay, he was mindful of what he was doing and the consequences. So what did Solomon do? Whatever he wanted, whatever he wanted, there were no no's in Solomon's world. Whatever he thought might make him happy, he tried it and then he evaluated it. And if there was something he wanted, he went out and got it. Okay, think about the things he referred to. Thinking, hey, maybe physical pleasure was the path to happiness or fulfillment. He took wine to cheer him and put together a sizable harem. Would business make him happy? Well, he had the biggest, most successful ranch in town that enabled him to stack gold and silver for himself. Maybe it was an aesthetic life that would make him happy. And to that end, he created beautiful gardens, watered them by picturesque ponds that he constructed. If that wasn't enough, he used some of his money to hire his own personal choir to perform concerts in the palace whenever he wanted. If a man could be happy through the arts, through creating a beautiful environment around him, Solomon would have been a happy man. Maybe, maybe it was having a retinue of servants that would make him happy. To that end, he bought some and he had so many, some were being born in his household. They were all over his house, serving him hand and foot. What about success? Would success make him happy? In the end, all of his work made him arguably the greatest man in the history of Jerusalem, the greatest city in the world during his time. He did it. He got it all. And in summary, listen to what he says in Ecclesiastes 2.10. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired. I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labor and this was the reward for all my toil. What's he saying? He worked hard. He actually enjoyed his work and his work paid off spectacularly. He succeeded, literally succeeded in everything he did. In pursuit of happiness, he tried it all and got it all. He was delighted with himself, but something wasn't right. There was something amiss and he confesses it in verse 11. Yet, when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless. A chasing after the wind. Nothing was gained under the sun. So what did he do? He took a step back and evaluated. And he realized that after all was said and done, after he did an honest assessment of his happiness, what he found after he created the seemingly perfect circumstances for himself. He said all that left him empty-handed. He discovered that pursuing the regret-free life through happiness is like trying to catch the wind. Happiness is elusive and in pouring himself into its pursuit, regrettably proved to be meaningless. Like trying to catch the wind. So the question that prevents regret cannot be, will this decision really make me happy? That question will inevitably lead to regret because it pursues the wrong objective. So what is the question then? What's the question that leads to wisdom? Well, interestingly, it does have something to do with happiness. All that said, it has something to do with happiness. There are two passages of Scripture that give us insight into this next right question. And again, it's about happiness. The first one is an obscure law that God passed down to Moses to the Israelites. And it's found in Deuteronomy chapter 24 verse 5. I want you to look at this law. You've probably never thought about it before. If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him for one year. For one year, he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married. Okay. Bring happiness to the wife he has married. Now, this law was not designed to bring the man happiness directly. It doesn't make allowance for him to avoid war for his own psychological well-being. It actually makes allowance for him to avoid war because of his responsibility to his wife. What it infers is that he needs to do everything in his power to serve his wife's happiness. Now, the other passage that applies is found in a parable that Jesus told. It's the parable of the bags of gold. And it's about a master who is going on a very long trip, and he had a lot of money, and he decided that he didn't want his money to sit idly by while he was gone, but he wanted his money to enable him to make more money. So he entrusted his wealth to his servants. His expectation was that they would invest the money and make him some more. That would be good stewardship. So to one he gave five bags, to another he gave two, and to another one he gave one bag of gold. Now, the one who got five bags of gold, guess what? He turned it into ten bags of gold. The one that got two bags of gold, he turned it into four bags of gold, and to the one who got one, he buried it so he wouldn't lose his master's money. Now, when the master returned, what happened? The fearful barrier of the bag of gold immediately got fired, but the other two got the same speech. I want you to listen to what the master said to them. Matthew 25, 21. His master replied, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness. Come and share your master's happiness. So what did he do? He praised them for their excellent service. He promoted them to have more responsibility, and then he invited them to come join him in a feast and share in his happiness. Now, those two passages of Scripture provide us the key to preventing regret in our decision making. The wise person understands that he or she is to serve the happiness of others, not their own. The newlywed was given a year to serve his wife's happiness, and the servants were called to serve their master's happiness. And did you well, we assume what happened when they did. The servants were made happy by the happiness of the master. They saw that they blessed him and that brought them happiness. Come and share my happiness. The newlywed was to be given a year to serve his wife's happiness, and we can assume he was happy after he did that, because we all know that if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. Now, we can formulate the question that will prevent regret. Before we make a decision, we need to ask this question. Whose happiness does this decision serve? Whose happiness does this decision serve? There are really three options. My decision will serve the happiness of my master, God. My decision will serve the happiness of others, will serve the greater good, or my decision will serve myself. If the answer is, it serves my own happiness, then we need to stop before we execute the decision and ask a couple of more questions. Is this decision about consumption or contribution? Who benefits from this decision? Now, some decisions you make are necessarily for you. I get that. Inescapably. We have to make some decisions for ourselves. We have to eat because we can't serve other people hangry, right? It just doesn't work. You need to eat before you move in to serve someone in that condition. You have to have suitable clothes. You need to sleep. I'm not saying that you never make decisions that will benefit you, but if you want to minimize regret, they can't all be about your happiness. They just can't. Remember what John Stuart Mill said? Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. The wise decision that prevents regret is actually the one that serves God and serves others. It can't always be about me. If it's about me, I'm creating regret. But here's the benefit. When you serve others, happiness will follow. There is great joy in contributing to the greater good. We should be a blessing for the greater good. We should make decisions that align with our call to let our light shine to serve the kingdom of God and the people he loves. Now, my hope is that you're starting to understand that God has a trustworthy plan for your best life. He has a way of wisdom that will prevent us from making regrettable decisions and he has a way of healing beyond the inevitable regrettable decisions we will make. But that best life begins with a personal relationship with him through faith in Jesus Christ. When you trust that Jesus died to give you life, your eternity is secured. You know that one day you'll live in a place where you won't have to worry about your circumstances because you'll be in the presence of God. Your eternity is secured through faith in Jesus. And through his gift of life, we can see that he can be trusted to guide our lives. If we choose to submit to his wisdom, then we will live our best life. And that best life will not be defined by how it treats me, but how I treat other people. Now, you should begin to follow God's plan for your best life. His wisdom will prevent regret. We don't have to live in regret. We can exercise wisdom and prevent it. The question is, will we? And some of that regret prevention begins with stopping the insane pursuit of your own happiness. It will not prevent regret. That pursuit will cause it. And here's why. Because we are made to pursue God. We're made to pursue God. We're made to serve God and his people. And when we do, you know what the master says? Well done, my good and faithful servant. You've been faithful with a few things. I'll entrust you with more. Come in and share my happiness. Let's pray. Father, we're grateful that you have a plan for our lives. We do regret, Lord, that we have gotten drawn into this drive to create our own happiness. We are turned inward to our own detriment. And I pray, Father, that by your spirit, through the truth of your word, you have begun to convince us today that we should look up and look out. That your way is the best way. That the great privilege of our lives is to serve the happiness of others. So, Father, I pray that each day, before we begin our decision-making, that we'll remember to look up and to look out. To aim to serve the greater good for your glory. Thank you for all those divine opportunities that you give us to do that. And, Lord, I pray that we would be faithful so we can demonstrate to the world your love and faithfulness. If you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, the truth is that in Him and only in Him will you ever find the true death of significance. He, in Him we live and move and have our being. He is the one who sustains our lives and gives our lives meaning and purpose. My hope is that you have placed your faith in Jesus and you've begun that journey of life with God. It is the hope of happiness. So, if you're not a follower of Jesus, you need to understand how much He loved you, how much He gave for you. That when He came and lived His life on earth, He was looking out for you and for me. And so, He lived a perfect life, died on a cruel cross, but was ultimately raised from the dead to give us life. True life begins with faith in Him. And then when you place your faith in Jesus, He becomes, we say, Savior and Lord, He is Master. And He has a plan that will lead you to living beyond regrets and living to prevent regrets. It's the plan of wisdom. And His plan is for you to be a servant to others the same way He was for you. Wisdom says it's not about your happiness. It's about others' happiness, those that you have the privilege to love and serve. Father, thank you so much for the truth of Your Word. May we heed its wisdom and apply it. And Lord, I pray that our decisions will prevent more regrets and bring joy to others. It's in the strong name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.