Thursday, June 13, 2013

When Past Is the Springboard for the Future

God is more interested in our future than our past.
We can know this is a fact by the following: because we are blessed by the privilege of a living, breathing life—the evidence of which is a brand-new day—we can know that God has plans for our present, and, assuming the present continues as it becomes the future, God has plans for that too.
God knows that our past can just as easily hem us in as it can liberate us.
What, then, is of God?
Surely we can know what is of God by how it feels in our deepest, most God-congruent self.
The things that hem us in tend to be condemnatory by effect. We feel the weight of guilt; the burden of shame. But the things that truly liberate us are of God, because they’re the sustainable things.
The things of the past are fuel for our futures, and God can use anything.
There is no condemnation for those sincerely in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). They who are sincerely living for him who saved them are gifted the grace to know the forgiveness of God and the wisdom to know that this is from God. They believe it boldly.
They look to their pasts, and the shaming that they’ve endured at the hand of the evil one, and they accept they were duped. We’ve all been there. We’ve all faced the accusations of the one who would discourage us so much as to convince us to flee from our only real hope and help: God.
When we can access our pasts because we’re beyond shame and guilt, we suddenly see God’s use for it. Indeed, this is how God makes good out of the things suffered for those who love him. God is faithful in this. There is nothing that precludes us from the blessings of this reconciliation in our practical circumstance.
God can use the conveyance of sin for his glory by taking that past thing and working it for our and others’ good into our futures. There is no glory in the sin, but there is unfathomable beauty and glory in the thing that God makes out of it. Let’s never doubt it!
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The things of the past are fuel for our futures, and God can use anything. The present and future are more important than the past because they’re loaded with potential, but the past is done. God wants us to be honest about our past; then he can heal us and use it for his glory.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

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