I was supposed to talk to missionaries and church workers in Ecuador via Zoom on the “Blessings of Corporate Prayer“ this morning, but I got confused about the starting time because of the three-hour time difference so I missed it. Oops! I hate it when I do that. I don’t know what the situation was there in Ecuador where they had gathered together to listen to me speak, whether they came from a long distance or what. I am not going to ask, I already feel bad.

Making a mistake that we pay the consequences for is frustrating like driving to fast and getting a ticket, or being late for an interview and losing a great job opportunity. But making a mistake that others pay the price for can be devastating if serious enough. A Dad fell asleep while driving, went off the road and hit a tree and his three kids that were in the car all died. A doctor makes a mistake in surgery and his patient is paralyzed.

Sometimes the mistake is obvious and the consequence is immediate, but often the mess up is imagined and the results are fuzzy as to why. A son gets addicted to drugs in High School and dies from an overdose, and both parents grieve over their self-perceived poor parenting. I miss an appointment to preach on the value and importance of corporate prayer and then in my imagination I perceive that a revival that was poised to happen fizzles out. Hardly ever is there a marriage that goes bad, or a family that breaks up, or a growing, committed Christian that backslides I don’t think that if only I had preached better, prayed more, or counseled wiser this wouldn’t have happened.

But I do believe that I have learned over the years how to honestly, responsibly, and humbly evaluate situations, choices, and results, confess to the Lord acts and choices that I have made that were truly wrong or unwise, experience His forgiveness and grace, and learn and grow from it, so that hopefully my future decisions and choices are much wiser, ending up with much better results.

Remorse and guilt over consequences that others experience, whether real or perceived, because of us are difficult to deal with and can paralyze us so that we don’t attempt to do anything great with our life ever again. That is a bad place to stay. I sought out wise people to talk to so as to think right, get on with life, and set some more B-HAG’s, Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals.