There Is No Compensation. Ideal for Bible Study, Church and Personal Devotions

Imagine a young woman arriving to her parents' home and finding them banishing her from their lives.
How much happier would she feel if she had an expensive car, wore designer clothes or had her handbag filled with money?
Would her hurt and disappointment be fine if she had loads of things to compensate? What compensation would be sufficient?
That situation reflects how people process life. They try to feel better by some form of compensation. At school the non-academic boys delighted to excel at sport. The loser in a contest would look for someone to beat, to reinstate their self worth.
There is an innate urge to compensate ourselves.
People put a positive spin on their negatives. “He might have more money, but I don’t think he’s happy!” “When my marriage fell apart I was freed from all those complaints.” “Sure I drive an old car but I really like it.”
This tendency to compensate, often imagining value where there is none, fools us to accepting less than we should. We may not press on for what is better if we can readily placate negative feelings.
Re spiritual things, like eternal destiny, I have heard some silly things said. “I'll have all my friends with me in hell.” “In hell I be free from those hypocrites.”
The danger is finding compensation where there is no value. We stroke our feelings, but have simply deceived ourselves.
Death of a marriage is terrible. There is no compensation. Loss of good relationship in family is a terrible thing, with no real compensation.
We are much wiser to acknowledge our failure and loss, and give our mess to God. God can turn failures into success and heal and restore what seems impossible to fix.
The Bible warns that there are things with no possible compensation. Nothing we get or convince ourselves we have can pay for our loss.
“What profit is there for a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? Or what will a man give in return for his soul?” Mat 16:26
Nothing is more important than our eternal destiny. Having all the things of this life in abundance is of no value compared to eternity in torment, missing God's blessings. It is a fool’s idea that the things of this world and this life are of value compared to what God has for us as God’s children in God’s house for eternity.
However the principle has wider application too. The principle can be applied right through our lives, where we see things for their true value and stop playing mind games with ourselves, trying to imagine we have compensation, when in fact we have suffered loss.
There is no compensation for the penalties of sin. There is no compensation for eternal death in hell. And there is no compensation for having destroyed the good things in our life.
There is no compensation for a destroyed marriage, or for hurting people, or for destroying our reputation, or for wasting our time and money, or for trashing precious things through our pride, greed or ignorance. Playing mind games to say “It’s alright” is a fool’s response.
We are far better to feel the pain and accept the blame, than to try to imagine some form of compensation.
Instead of trying to compensate, by attempting our own fresh start, blaming others, placating our feelings, making excuses, and so on, we need to do what we have to do about our eternal destiny. To secure our eternal peace with God and the blessings of eternity we have to come to God and repent of our foolishness, sin, selfishness, pride and rebellion against God. We have to ask God to forgive us and we have to accept the payment for our failures through what Jesus did for us on the Cross at Calvary, 2,000 years ago. When we do that God steps in and forgives us for our failures and sins, wiping them away and giving us a new start, born again spiritually as God’s child, and destined to spend eternity with God in heaven.
So too with our multiple failures along life’s journey. Rather than trying to pretend it doesn’t matter, we need to recognise there is no compensation for what we have lost, or the mistakes we have made. We aren’t to try to feel good about what is bad, but to bring our brokenness to God and confess our own responsibility for what went wrong. We then give to God the broken pieces and the mess we made, asking God to bring good out of what we have done.
God is the God of salvation, not us. God’s blessing and restoration is far more wonderful than our own ideas of compensation. So don’t live in your own delusions. Stop trying to pretend things aren’t as bad as they might be. Face up to your folly, weakness and failure. Then give the messes to God. Don’t look for ‘compensation’, but seek deliverance, forgiveness and blessing from God.
Learn that principle and clear up the relics of your past failures, then set your sail into your future, determined to give all your messes to God, determined to look to him. And keep in mind that when it comes to the tragedies of life, There is No Compensation, but there is God’s grace, restoration and blessing.

Ps Chris Field,Consequences of sin,