Satan has some nasty tricks to keep a person locked up in sin. One of them is through being sorry for what you’ve done. It is all so close to a step in the right direction, but Satan diverts it. “The sorrow of the world produces death,<\/em>” Paul tells us. That is because you condemn yourself but you can’t make yourself do something about it.<\/p>\n It could be the fear, or cowardice, in facing people as something a bit less than what you were. It could be the unwillingness to forgive yourself for what you’ve done. It could even be the lack of faith that declares God would never want me after what I’ve done to him.<\/p>\n But each of those are\u00a0lies<\/em>. You can be brave. It is people who love you, not enemies, who have been looking for you to welcome home. You can leave your sins behind because you can control the decisions in your life. And oh you know God is waiting with open arms just for you! “And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him<\/em>” (Luke 15:20).<\/p>\n “Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing. For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted<\/em>” (II Corinthians 7:9-10).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I won’t stop looking for you, my friend, waiting for the day we can walk through life and into heaven arm-in-arm.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPrior Lesson\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSearching for My Friend\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNext Lesson\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sorrow Without Regret Satan has some nasty tricks to keep a person locked up in sin. One of them is through being sorry for what you’ve done. It is all so close to a step in the right direction, but Satan diverts it. “The sorrow of the world produces death,” Paul tells us. That is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":25976,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-65616","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":30637,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/bible-studies\/the-corinthian-letters\/titus-report\/","url_meta":{"origin":65616,"position":0},"title":"Titus\u2019 Report","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 15, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Titus' Report Paul's reaction to the news\u00a0(II Corinthians 7:5-7) As Paul mentioned before (II Corinthians 1:16), he decided to go to Macedonia before going to Corinth. Yet, the choice was not without problems. 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How is Jesus lessening\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":42915,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/bible-studies\/jesus-and-the-pharisees\/the-pharisees-and-fasting\/","url_meta":{"origin":65616,"position":2},"title":"The Pharisees and Fasting","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 4, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The Pharisees and Fasting The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:16-18) In this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses the true righteousness of fasting before God versus the phony fasting of the scribes and Pharisees. 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In fact, you've stated that they are keeping you from the things you most\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":65693,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/bible-studies\/searching-for-my-friend\/judge-jury-executioner\/","url_meta":{"origin":65616,"position":4},"title":"Judge, Jury, Executioner","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 11, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Judge, Jury, Executioner by Jeffrey W. Hamilton Shortly after you got into legal trouble last year, you were ready to plead guilty to your charges because you knew you had sinned gravely. 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In this lesson, we will study something that the Bible teaches us to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/65616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/65616\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}