Can you remember a time in your life when you acted impulsively and later came to regret it? Maybe you impulsively ran out and bought a new car after being convinced from a TV commercial that it was exactly what you needed and soon regretted that decision because you really couldn’t make the payments. Maybe it was the mortgage you signed without reading it carefully because you needed to have that new mansion of a house with a swimming pool, a golf-course lawn, and all the furnishings to maintain your image — just to realize that you are now a slave to it. Maybe it was that new job you took because it paid more, but later you discovered the reality that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Whatever the decision may have been, you regretted it later.

If you go back to that greatest regret in life, what would it be? Think about that for a minute and then think about how could you have avoided it.

Should I have had that last drink? Should I have gone to lunch with that woman (as a married man)? Should I have watched that pornographic movie on that business trip? Should I have spent our life savings at the Black Jack table? Should I have gone to that party? Should I have (or not have) [fill in the blank]?

What is Paul trying to tell us here?

Stop making stupid choices and start allowing wisdom into your circumstances.

Lets break this down a bit more.

First, we have to begin to embrace a counter-cultural lifestyle, which is tough, because culture (then and now) is at odds with life in Jesus Christ. Wisdom, forgiveness, transparency, honesty, morality, fill in the blank ______, all seem to be foreign concepts to mainstream culture.

Time and time again, when step into the jetstream of culture you will end up in a place that you don’t want to be. Today the jetstream of culture is constantly trying to pull us in directions we don’t want to go in; relationally, financially, fill in the blank______.

Paul is telling us to stop going with the flow!

Second, we have begin to live life more wisely and stop looking for loopholes. Doesn’t matter if your a Christian or not, we ALL look for these life-loopholes, don’t we. We all try to go around what we know to do is right, don’t we.

I know my parents said that, “BUT!”

I know he/she said not to ______, “BUT!”

I know the Bible says that, “BUT!”

For some reason, we choose stupidity over wisdom and find ways to talk ourselves into things we shouldn’t. We choose to run from the truth — all the time. More often then not, we are always asking ourselves after the fact, “how did I get myself into this?”

The rub? We know what we should do or need to do, but we deceive ourselves by making a series of unwise choices that ultimately lead up to us to making a wrong decision. We have bought into the crazy idea that we can mange outcomes and history repeats itself in our lives, over and over again.

What if we started being honest with ourselves and starting asking tough questions like, “what’s the wise thing to do in this situation?”

The hard truth — the easiest person to deceive is ourselves!

This is a message I hope you listen to and take on board, because I didn’t and made a mess of things. Here is an excerpt from Heartstone that reveals my self-deception.

Acting from a self-authored script on my own stage of life, I foolishly performed to the audience of this world, only seeing Jesus as a supplement to the playbill. I never knew the world looked at me through stained-glass eyes as it observed the apex of my achievements. I convinced everyone that my marriage was perfect, that my success in the corporate world was the greatest achievement ever, and that the material stuff and the financial success I obtained somehow made me someone. I convinced myself that I was in complete control of the world I created and that I was absolutely untouchable as long as I had my stuff to hide behind. With broad brushstrokes, I painted this far-fetched illusion that I alone was the motivating force behind all this success.

Arrogantly striving to live up to the expectations of this performance-oriented view of the world, I built a present-day tower of Babel with my own hands—stone by stone. I learned the difficult lesson that a preoccupation with “self” distorts our perspective to view everything and everyone primarily based on the way they affect us in the moment. My relationships became more and more self-serving, and success, position, and material possessions became my security and my reality.

Here is a better question to ask yourself, “in light of my future hope and dreams, what is the wise thing to do?”

Pause and face up to know what God wants for your life! Then? DO IT, because it will change the trajectory of your life!