May 23 – Shedding the Past (Philippians 3:12-14)

“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal.”(Philippians 3:13-14)

IN WORD:
It’s easy to live with regrets. Some people are able never to look back, but most of us can point to a few decisions that keep us wondering what life would have been like if we’d done things differently. Those kinds of thoughts can cripple us. They haunt us and keep us preoccupied with the past.
Two truths will keep the past from stealing our joy in the present: our identification with Jesus and our faith in God’s sovereignty. The enemy will seize the opportunity to remind us of our failures and accuse us of disobedience. He may be right, of course, but we aren’t living on the basis of what we have or haven’t done. We live fully identified with Jesus. We stand before God on the basis of what He has done.

A firm conviction that God is sovereign will also protect us from our regrets. Even when we’ve made missteps, we can trust that God knew about them before the foundation of the world and planned to compensate accordingly. Nothing we’ve done has surprised Him. He has known all along how to bring us in line with His will — even when we’ve walked far away from it.

IN DEED:
God never asked us to check the rear view mirror in order to lament about our shortcomings. We confessed when we came to Jesus that we were sinful failures, and He saved us. It’s time to move forward.
Do memories of the past hound you? Take an active stance against them. Point the enemy to Jesus as the basis of your righteousness — his accusations are irrelevant once you’ve found your identity in the perfect Son of God. And remember the sovereignty of God. Find heroes of the faith in Scripture who failed — it’s a pretty easy task — and see how God sovereignly worked out His purposes in spite of their failures. Rest in the present and look forward with hope. Nothing in your past can thwart God’s plan.

“God is not defeated by human failure.” -William C. White-