What is “Without Regrets: A Study of Ecclesiastes?”
“Without Regrets” started for me about 8 years ago. I was going through a particular difficult time in my life and I was depressed. I started making choices that were wrong and I knew they were wrong, but I didn’t care. Or at least I thought I didn’t care.
God got my attention and made me realize that I was headed down a dangerous path. I needed to get my life back on track, but just realizing that was the case didn’t help me know how to change anything. I was still depressed and angry about my situation. God has promised that His answers are in His word, so I went there looking.
God led me to the book of Ecclesiastes. I had heard that it was a depressing book so I felt like it fit. What I found as I went through its pages was the regrets of a man who had everything, but still felt he had missed the point. I dug in and studied and search through the scripture to figure out what Solomon was trying to say through the pages and found many relevant points to my life and the lives of so many other people.
1) The desires and passions that people turn to in order to find fulfillment don’t change over time. So many people are looking for happiness though money, power, relationships, wisdom, authority, influence, good deeds, etc. Solomon had all that and still found his life lacking.
2) Solomon realized that he was going to die one day and all the things that he had worked for and built in his life would pass on to someone else. He had no way to ensure that that person would be as wise or as careful with his things as he had been.
3) Solomon saw that by trying to work hard and control everything in his life, he had actually lost control of everything in his life. He just had an illusion of control.
4) Only God has control and knows the true needs of our lives. God wants us to come into a relationship with Him through His Son Jesus Christ. By this we can rest in the knowledge that God is in control and that He is responsible for working out the situations we face.
Finding these principles freed me from the debilitating need to control that I felt. It freed me from the depression when things didn’t go my way. It reminded me that God is good and that He loves me and He will work out everything for His best. Even though I had been a follower of Christ for several years, I truly started to understand what God meant when He spoke about the “peace that passes all understanding.”
“Without Regrets” is a book that helps the reader work through Ecclesiastes to find how these truths and principles apply to their own life. It’s been several years, but God showed me that when He blesses us with understanding or knowledge, we are responsible to bless others with it. This is why I write daily devotions and share them. This is the only reason that I wrote the book. God has shown Himself faithful to me and I want to share that with everyone possible.