About 10 years ago, there was a movie in which one of the characters, something of a buffoon, shows off his tattoo that reads, “NO RAGRETS.” The character isn’t sharp enough to realize the error emblazoned across his collarbone, let alone how ironic it is. The father of the girl he wants to date grills him a bit: “You have no regrets? Not one single one?” The young man, rather comedically, continues to insist that there are no regrets in his life.

Imagine walking through life without a single regret! Such a thing is hard to fathom. I’ve spent many nights tossing and turning, wishing I could relive a moment or even a large swath of my life. I think we all have said things we wish we hadn’t said, exhibited selfish behavior that pained others, and made foolish choices. It’s important and healthy for us, as people of God, to feel remorse over the things we’ve said and done that displease God and hurt ourselves or others. That feeling should lead us to repentance.

But regret can do a great deal of damage if we don’t let it go. Persistent regret depletes us of our confidence to do good. It insists that we define ourselves as something less than what God says we are. It flashes our errors before our eyes like a blinking neon sign, blinding us to the positive traits and capabilities that the Holy Spirit has nurtured in us. If left unchecked, the emotional toll can even lead to physical problems. We should not attempt to delude ourselves into thinking we never do anything wrong, or that it doesn’t matter if we do. But it doesn’t honor God to become crippled by regret — to get stuck there, self-flagellating. If anything, that sounds like something that would please the Enemy, not the Savior.

Psalm 103:12 tells us that God removes our transgressions “as far as the east is from the west” (NIV). Don’t think of that in terms of the globe — which is, of course, a sphere because west and east do actually meet on a sphere! Think instead of the plane geometry you learned in school: if you start at a point and draw a line extending infinitely to the east and to the west, those lines (and I realize this is the clunky explanation of a weak geometry student) will never, ever touch. The line goes on into eternity without ever intersecting itself. West never meets east. Never ever. That is how far our sins are removed from us. In God’s view, they are eternally disassociated from us. And isn’t God’s view the one that matters?

God is so quick to forget our sins and our foibles, yet we often feel a need to mull them over. But relief for us can be found in Lamentations 3:22-23, which says that God’s “compassions never fail; they are new every morning.” The context of these verses isn’t about personal regret, and yet I think it applies. If God’s compassions are new every morning, then every day is a brand new day. Every day is a chance to start again. And if we are going to start fresh, we have to first shed any regret of the past. It can’t be a new day if we’re still carrying around yesterday’s baggage.

Now, regret isn’t always about sins committed. We often regret missed opportunities. We regret our lack of foresight, our lack of courage or doing something that wasn’t wrong but was embarrassing. I did something in college that ended in extreme embarrassment. Believe me, I’m not going to recount the incident here. It haunted me for decades. Then one day it occurred to me that none of the people who were there with me were in my social circle, and in fact, most of them had probably forgotten I existed. Why was I allowing the scene to replay in my head? Who cared? I prayed and asked God to help me let go of that and some other ancient regrets that had petrified in my brain. It is for freedom Christ set us free! (Galatians 5:1 NIV)

As I mentioned, regret has its helpful side. It forces us to learn about ourselves and what we value. It reminds us that we may need to ask forgiveness from God and others. But it is not meant to be our constant companion. Learn, repent and ask forgiveness as needed, and then give yourself permission to let it go. God has let it go; shouldn’t you?

Image by Mary Long via Getty Images | This article was originally titled “Let Go of Regret” in the October 2025 issue of The War Cry.