Leave It Behind

Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Isaiah 43:18

The mind is a curious thing, remembering things from bygone days while forgetting what was done yesterday. Why does it give us access to some memories and not others? Why do we easily forget what we want to remember and remember the things we would rather forget?

When Jesus went to the cross, he took with Him all the things we want to forget; the things that we feel shame for, are regretful of, and embarrassed about. Mainly, everything that we now know had taken us further away from God. Jesus bore every single one of those, and when we lay them down in repentance, we get this beautiful promise from the Father:

I will be merciful towards their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. Hebrews 8:12

This is bad news for the devil, the deceiver, because he doesn’t want there to be any forgetting of the past. He wants us to carry all that baggage, keeping us burdened by the weight of it in order to hinder us from experiencing the freedom that the sacrifice of Jesus brings.

God does not want us looking back with regret, He wants us looking forward with hope – ‘I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?’ or as the NKJV says, shall you not know it? We cannot know the new if we keep holding on to the old, for the past will become a barrier to seeing the new things that God is doing; the new things he has for our lives. So, let us say with Paul, ‘forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus’ (vs13-14).

Leave the past in the past and live in the fullness of your freedom by the sovereign power of God.

**photo used from – https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/450360031471274584/