This week's devotion is entitled:

Repent!: Pain Part 4

For God can use sorrow in our lives to help us turn away from sin and seek salvation. We will never regret that kind of sorrow. But sorrow without repentance is the kind that results in death.
~2 Corinthians 7:10 (New Living Translation)

This week in our pain series, we'll talk about how pain can turn you around and put you back on the right path. It's true that one of the surest ways to know that you're on the right path is if Satan keeps throwing obstacles at you: temptation, fears, hauntings of the past, etc. But it's also true that the surest way to know that you're on the wrong path is if God allows pain and suffering to come to you and/or those around you as a direct result of your actions (like if you drink until you're drunk, He allows you to suffer from a hang over the next day).

Obviously, most people who have a hang over in the morning regret how much they drank the night before. When God allows you to suffer as a result of your bad choices, it normally causes you to regret what you did to cause the pain and suffering. Regret often leads to repentance. If you repent from your sins, the sorrow was well dealt with. You won't regret that at all.

But when you worry yourself until the point of depression, there is no lesson learned. You just cry and hurt and there's no reason for it. True, it's good to get things out of your system, but you need to move on once it's out. People who comitt suicide are without hope, and you definitely don't want to let yourself get to that point. Let Jesus be your hope.

This week, try to think of a time when a hurtful situation that resulted from your choices caused you to repent from a sin.