There Is Nothing Behind, So Look Ahead!
My dear friends, I write to you today, knowing what it is to live looking to the past and not being able to solve it or relive it. Nothing we do will ever change the past and no matter how much we try we can never go back there again. It is futile to dwell on it and to no avail.
Failures and disappointments. Aches and pains from the past that just won’t seem to go away. Most of us know what it’s like to suffer from them but too few of us know just what to do about them. So we limp along, hoping somehow they’ll magically stop hurting and getting us depressed.
But it never happens that way. In fact, sometimes the passing of time often leaves us in worse condition not better. Because, instead of putting those painful failures behind us, we dwell on them until they become more real to us than the promises of God for a bright future. We focus on them until we become bogged down in depression, frozen in our tracks by the fear that if we go on, we will fail again.
Not true. God says that His mercies are new every morning and that we can start believing that and walking that way.
Unbelief looks to the past and tells us we cannot do anything right or that things will never work. Unbelief chokes us and paralyzes us and resentment, unforgiveness, anger, and depression settle in only to make us sick. Literally sick.
If depression has driven you into a spiritual nose dive, break out of it by getting your eyes off the past and onto your future, a future that’s been guaranteed by Christ Jesus through the great promises in His Word. A future of goodness and prosperity of health and love.
I leave you with this scripture from Philippians. Read what Paul had to say about this and put it to work in your life today.
Philippians 3:1-14 Living Bible (TLB)
1 Whatever happens, dear friends, be glad in the Lord. I never get tired of telling you this, and it is good for you to hear it again and again.
2 Watch out for those wicked men, dangerous dogs, I call them who say you must be circumcised to be saved.
3 For it isn’t the cutting of our bodies that makes us children of God; it is worshiping him with our spirits. That is the only true “circumcision.” We Christians glory in what Christ Jesus has done for us and realize that we are helpless to save ourselves.
4 Yet if anyone ever had reason to hope that he could save himself, it would be I. If others could be saved by what they are, certainly, I could!
5 For I went through the Jewish initiation ceremony when I was eight days old, having been born into a pure-blooded Jewish home that was a branch of the old original Benjamin family. So I was a real Jew if there ever was one! What’s more, I was a member of the Pharisees who demand the strictest obedience to every Jewish law and custom.
6 And sincere? Yes, so much so that I greatly persecuted the Church; and I tried to obey every Jewish rule and regulation right down to the very last point.
7 But all these things that I once thought very worthwhile—now I’ve thrown them all away so that I can put my trust and hope in Christ alone.
8 Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have put aside all else, counting it worth less than nothing, in order that I can have Christ,
9 and become one with him, no longer counting on being saved by being good enough or by obeying God’s laws, but by trusting Christ to save me; for God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith—counting on Christ alone.
10 Now I have given up everything else—I have found it to be the only way to really know Christ and to experience the mighty power that brought him back to life again and to find out what it means to suffer and to die with him.
11 So whatever it takes, I will be one who lives in the fresh newness of life of those who are alive from the dead.
12 I don’t mean to say I am perfect. I haven’t learned all I should even yet, but I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ saved me for and wants me to be.
13 No, dear brothers, I am still not all I should be, but I am bringing all my energies to bear on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead,
14 I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God is calling us up to heaven because of what Christ Jesus did for us.
So, my dears, instead of looking behind you and saying, “I can’t,” start to look ahead and say, “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me!”
This is Mariam From My Ami Way to Yours reminding you also to Always, Keep Love Above.