By Cyndi
Forgetting the past. Can it be done? Do you have some skeletons in the closet that you’d just as soon stay there locked up forever? Many of us are not proud of our pasts. We want our past to be just that-the past. The Apostle Paul writes, in Philippians 3:13, that he wants to forget those things which are behind and reach forth towards things ahead. He recommends forgetting the past and looking to the future. Sometimes this is easier said than done.
Our memories cannot be changed; we can’t change the past. What’s done is done and it’s imprinted in our brains. Maybe the memory can’t be erased, but the emotional pain connected to it can be. All the fears, anxieties, and emotional scars from our past can be healed, erased away. God is our healer in every sense of the word. He wants the pain we carry from our past, that heavy emotional weight we have on our back, to be lifted off us so that we are able to focus on the future.
Paul writes in Philippians 3:14, “I run straight toward the goal in order to win the prize, which is God’s call through Christ Jesus to the life above.” Again, he encourages us to look ahead and not back. If you ever watch a race at a track meet, you’ll notice that the runners never look behind them to see what’s going on. They only look straight ahead toward the goal. I saw a photograph in Runner’s World of Usain Bolt winning the 100 meters in the Olympics with his shoe untied. I doubt he even noticed it. He was totally focused on his goal-to win. And what do we as believers win? We win that place of life above-life above our circumstances, above all the negative news reports. We win that life with Jesus where we can have joy in the midst of sorrow and peace in the midst of fear.
It is only through the Lord that we are able to leave all the pain from our past behind and pursue a better future. The world is full of pain and sorrow, but He is able to heal us and restore us to a place where we don’t spend our time dwelling on what did or didn’t happen to us. We can pull out all the skeletons and throw them away. When we’re healed, they can’t scare us anymore. There’s a higher calling ahead of us, my friends, so don’t look back.
(Good News Translation used in verses above)
Cyndi, One thing I sruggeled with for many years was trying to find the right key on my own to unlock the closet. After many failures, I admitted to myself and God, that I couldn’t do it alone. That’s when God sent godly people into my life who had the right keys to help me.