The Ballestero Blog

A Moment Of Weakness And A Lifetime Of Regret

All it will take to give you pain the rest of your life, is for you to mess up just one time. From then on, your life will never be the same.

Can you image a successful middle-age person who has been in church all his life, never done drugs, yet going out on a Friday night to a bad part of town to try some drugs? I know such a man.

It is sad enough that he did it, but he didn’t expect to get hooked his first time. He lost his job, he lost his marriage, and the respect of his children.

He has been through the drug rehabilitation and counseling Knoxville department multiple times and no longer can be trusted with a ten-dollar bill. He might go spend it on drugs.

When he came to church, he’d just sit and cry during my sermons. For years he would come to the altar, desperately battling the power of his addiction.

Today, the dear brother declares he has deliverance. Thank the Lord. But he has moved to another city in the same state so no one will know his past. He can’t hold his head up anymore and face his old friends. It wasn’t that God couldn’t forgive him; it’s just that he now has nothing but regrets.

Some of us have lived long enough to hear about a moment of weakness that someone had. We know too that they will have a life-time of regret. It’s so horrible. Your heart even hurts for them. It doesn’t matter what the weakness was, regret is quick to cast it’s long shadow over them until they die.

This generation is living so, reckless. Heed the warning, if you will of my Father, a man of God who has gone on home to be with the Lord. He died in 1994 but his message is still relevant.

In the 1950’s, I remember him (Bro. Carl Ballestero) preaching a message that always seemed to fill up the altars. He called it “A Moment Of Weakness And A Lifetime Of Regret.” I found his sermon notes a few years ago. The message was needed then, it’s really needed now.

†††††††

Here is a copy of my Dad’s sermon notes.

I never want to let his messages die.

Sermon Preached by Rev. Carl Ballestero