Get Out Of the Past, You Don't Live There!

I remember years ago I was listening to a speaker, who kept repeating that he spent 25 years doing something. About the third time he said it, I turned to my friend and said "If I ever say 'after 25 years of....' anything, you punch me in the face". We live in a day and age that we are all about the experiences and what we have done. We love to tell stories of how things use to be. I worked in a warehouse that had slowed down business wise considerable over the years. Every day one of the older guys would tell us how is use to be. They would tell us about the days is was busy and the lines stretched out the door.

We like to live in the past, we like to set our identities on what we have done or accomplished. The problem is one of two things usually happens. Either we get so caught up thinking about the good ol days that we become despondent thinking about it, or we begin to remember all the negative things that happen and get discouraged. The glory days and the dark times that are both behind us share one thing in common. They are behind us and past us.

Philippians 3:12-15, Paul writes: Not that I have already reached the goal or am already perfect, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, 14 I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. 15 Therefore, let all of us who are mature think this way. And if you think differently about anything, God will reveal this also to you. (CSB)

Paul remembered his past, he was a super Hebrew, a religious elite. When Christ saved him, he became someone different, and forgot about his past. Paul may have spent 20 to 30 years becoming that person, but in an instant, he became a different person. He became a follower of Christ, a new creation.

The person you are becoming is more than the person you have been. Who you have been, what you spent your life doing isn't important because it's not about you. It's about Christ. It doesn't matter what school you went too, what sport you played, what your career was but it matters what Christ is doing in you. All the things you have done and have achieved are nothing compared to what Christ has done, is doing and will do in you. Let's keep our eyes on where we are going, not where we have been.