PAST? PRESENT? OR FUTURE?

 

Isaiah 53:6

All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God's PATHS to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.

One of the most incredible things (to me) that happens when you come to Christ for salvation, is the break that occurs in your heart and mind to your past.

Forgiveness frees a person from all the baggage their past weighs them down with.

It's not a slate that is wiped clean so that you never see it or think about it, rather it is a healing that takes place within a person that frees them from the pain, shame and guilt that their past attacks them with.

It would be great if God would simply wipe away all traces of bad memories, bad thoughts, and all the toxic emotions that come with our past, but He doesn't. Here is where the miracle occurs to me. God takes our past, full of our sin and rebellion against Him, and He removes it from us. In other words, we are forgiven, and it is to God as if we'd never sinned. There is a cleansing and a healing that comes to us when we confess, repent and turn to Him.

So when the memories come creeping up concerning our past, God takes the shame and guilt away so that all we have is the memory. We can truly say, "Yep! That's what I did......but praise God, I'm forgiven and free". I like the way the Big Book of A.A. describes this thought process. "We do not wish to close the door on our past, nor do we wish to live there." In other words, our past has value when we use it to move forward in this new life we have been given by Christ. 

If my past truly has any value to it at all, it is to be fuel to move me to obey Christ even more. It allows me to see the selfishness and destruction that I created because of my rebellion against God. If my past could be defined it would be, "I wanted what I wanted, and I did not want anyone trying to run my life." Sounds good and all independent doesn't it. Well, it was a prison of my own construction that lured me into a thought process that led me down a dark, dark, path.

So today, I want thank God for the complete healing that He brings to those who are saved. As II Corinthians 5:17 tells us...."If was are in Christ, then we are a NEW CREATION....the old has gone, the new has come. Sounds good to me, how about you?

God on you...

mbb