Many items of computer software have an ‘undo’ feature. It allows you to erase your most recent action and redo it the way you first intended or should have intended. It allows you to dismiss mistakes and proceed as if nothing wrong had happened. It also allows you to restore something you mistakenly deleted. It is so easy.

Real life is so much more difficult.

You can’t un-cook a cake or take back and forever erase words you have said and things you have done. We all make wrong decisions at some point in our lives. What’s worse is that no matter how much we repent and ask God for His forgiveness, what’s done is done and cannot be undone. While God has already forgiven us in the kingdom of heaven, the consequences on earth are very real and cannot be reversed.

Many of us feel condemned by what we have done.

We fail to understand that when God forgives our sins, He also forgets them. He cannot condemn us for something He has already forgiven. What many of us do not understand, however, is the fact that while God’s forgiveness erases our offences from His sight, we still have to face the consequences of our wrong decisions. Life is not as easy as a computer program.

When we have done or said or written the wrong thing, we need to do what we can to right the wrong. Often this is not easy and something the world says is unnecessary, but the Bible teaches us it is.

James 4:17  “So, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

One thing pilots learn is that they should always be looking for a place to land. Life is like that. Whenever we make mistakes, we should always be looking for how to right our wrongs as best we can. Sometimes it is embarrassing. Sometimes it is expensive, but it is always the right thing to do. We go through life making mistakes, some accidental and some foolishly intended. The key is how we follow up. Young sailors are taught how to ride out a storm by heading into the wind, not away from it. Don’t run from your mistakes; confront them head on. Try to undo whatever you can and then embrace God’s forgiveness and move on.

God’s forgiveness is free; it’s complete and it’s unconditional. We do not earn our forgiveness. We do not pay for our forgiveness. Jesus died and secured our forgiveness before we were even born.

Never forget the truth that love keeps no record of wrongs – and God is love.