Proverbs 5;12 (ESV)
And you say, “How I have hated instruction! And my heart spurned reproof!
Regrets are hard to live with. Having to say something like this proverb would be tough to live with. Solomon is just ending a section on what happens when you don't listen to God's Wisdom as it is delivered through His delivery system (in this chapter, our fathers). God freely provides us with His wisdom. But, often, man rejects that wisdom. After giving a list of what can happen when we reject His Word, Solomon gives us the line of regret "talk" in this verse and in the next two or three. I often wonder how people will be when they see the many times they "rejected" or "spurned" God's reproof or instruction. Those who sit in church and play with their phones - they spurn God's reproof. Those who attend Christian Schools and don't take to heart the teaching they receive - they spurn God's reproof. Those who walk by their Bibles day after day after day - they spurned God's reproof. Don't spurn God's reproof any longer. Simply submit and obey His instructions. When we fail to accept, by faith, the truths of God's Word, we are left with regret. In the above proverb we see the "words" of regret. Instead of rejoicing in the fruit that comes from heeding God's instruction, the fool can only morn how they hated instruction and how their heart spurned the very reproof they should have embraced. Note how the writer of Hebrews admonishes us about God's correction in our lives:
Hebrews 12:5-6
and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “MY son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
Nor faint when you are reproved by Him;
For those whom the Lord loves HE disciplines,
And HE scourges every son whom HE receives.”
We are to love God's reproof. He makes it available to us so that we can enjoy its benefits. It is only when we reject it that we morn, weep and are filled with regrets.