In her book 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, Amy Morin lists how someone can get stuck in their past:

• You wish you could press the rewind button so you could redo portions of your life.
• You struggle with major regrets about your past.
• You spend a lot of time wondering how life would have turned out if only you had chosen a slightly different path.
• You sometimes feel like the best days of your life are behind you.
• You replay past memories in your mind like a scene from a movie over and over again.
• You sometimes imagine saying or doing something differently in past memories to try and create a different outcome.
• You punish yourself or convince yourself you don’t deserve to be happy.

I don’t know about you, but when I read that list, I checked all the boxes. My personality is prone to introspection. When I get stressed, I go down the rabbit hole of rumination.

When I read the New Testament, I wonder if the apostle Peter struggled with a similar ailment. He certainly had several public failures that led him to feel guilty. And even after Jesus’ resurrection, when Jesus met him for breakfast, Peter still seemed to be drowning in his shame (see John 21).

And so, I suspect that Peter was preaching to his own heart when he wrote what we call 2 Peter 1:5-9. He tells God’s people that we should focus on growing in Christian virtues: “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and mutual affection, love” (verses 5-7).

Why should we strain so hard to grow in our walk with Jesus?

Peter says, “For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (verse 8).

In other words, pursuing who we could be in Christ will prevent us from being useless and lazy.

Yet we don’t always pursue these qualities. In fact, we might find ourselves avoiding spiritual growth and success altogether.

Why is that?

Peter explains: “But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting they have been cleansed from their past sins” (verse 9).

In other words, we might not pursue godliness because we are filled with shame, which makes us ineffective and unproductive. But Peter says that pondering our problems is both unhelpful and unnecessary. Those past failures have been forgiven. Sulking in our sins is disrespectful to our Savior, who died and rose for our redemption.

Peter, or even better yet, God himself, is imploring you to let go of your baggage of bad decisions and pursue your new life in Christ. Playing the tape of your past or punishing yourself for what went wrong won’t change history; it will just make the future worse.

So let go of the regret. Pursue God and the life he wants for you. Live in the victory that is yours in Jesus Christ. Believe your best days are yet to come.