Move Forward

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

~Isaiah 43:18-19

Does your past haunt you? Do you think of the things you’ve done and play out the scenario of how it could’ve gone differently if only you had said something different? Do the would haves, should haves and could haves keep you awake at night? We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t, or that we wish we could’ve done differently. I often think of my life and wish for the one big do-over. I know the exact moment I would go back to and what I’d do, and my whole life would be completely different. But we can’t go back, and God isn’t handing out do-overs. All we can do is, hopefully, learn from our past and don’t make the same mistakes over again. Our past makes us who we are today, and the events we survived are either an anchor that drags us down or a sail that moves us forward.

“Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: 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 (Philippians 3:13-14).” 

When we follow Jesus, we have to move forward and leave our past behind us. We simply cannot stay where we are and follow Jesus. Or, as I tell my kids, “You can’t ride two horses with one saddle, sugar bean.” We can live in the past and wallow in our failures, or we can get up and walk it off by exercising our faith in Jesus Christ. No matter where we’ve been or what we’ve been through, when we accept Christ as our Savior, He will not leave us where we are. He will pick us up, dust us off, and heal our wounds but we must take that first step toward Him.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:17-21).”

Read Ezekiel 40-45

© 2018 Marie McGaha