LEAVE IT and LEARN FROM IT

Have you thanked Him?

Have you praised Him?

Have you made it your priority to agree and cooperate with Him today?

Have you taken that deep breath and listened for what He has for you today?

ARE YOU SEEKING?

1 Timothy 2:1 (The Message)

^1-3The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know.

“I just can’t seem to get past it.” “It still hurts, it still haunts.” “I can even sometimes feeling it chasing me.” I just can’t seem to shake it.”

What is "IT"?

We talk about it a lot....THE PAST…

Could be OLD PAST; childhood hurts or adolescent traumas or could be NEW PAST; recent bad decisions, old dabbling or failed faith.

THE PAST in whatever form can be a relentless foe. It may wake us up at night. It tries to set our mood for the present. It definitely does its best at attempt to carve and cast our future.

But what do we do with it?

Oh sure, there are the old cliché’s about THE PAST. “Leave the PAST in the PAST.” “Move FORWARD.” “Don’t CRY OVER SPILLED MILK”. “Pull up those boot straps and move on.” And while they all offer solid advice for those pesky PAST moments and memories, sometimes we need a little bit more.

So if the PAST, whether distant or just the bitter memory of yesterday’s failures is dogging you this morning, let me offer a couple thoughts.

Give GRACE a chance.

The enemy loves to remind us all of our mess-ups, blunders, failures, and our selfish indulgences. And if we are not careful we will ruminate and marinate on them for days, even years, doing our best to erase them from memory.

However, we are kidding ourselves. We can’t undo the past. We can’t erase the errors.

BUT GOD CAN!

1 John 1:9 (NLV)

⁹ If we tell Him our sins, He is faithful and we can depend on Him to forgive us of our sins. He will make our lives clean from all sin.

Our part in the equation is to allow ourselves to accept GOD’s grace and learn from the mistakes.

Remember friends its God’s grace that deals with our past; and its God’s grace that paves the way for a better today and tomorrow. We bring nothing to the table.

Ephesians 2:5-8 (ERV)

⁵ We were spiritually dead because of all we had done against him. But he gave us new life together with Christ. (You have been saved by God’s grace.) ⁶ Yes, it is because we are a part of Christ Jesus that God raised us from death and seated us together with him in the heavenly places. ⁷God did this so that his kindness to us who belong to Christ Jesus would clearly show for all time to come the amazing richness of his grace.

⁸ I mean that you have been saved by grace because you believed. You did not save yourselves; it was a gift from God.

Secondly, “FORWARD”your focus.

Ask yourself this morning, what can I learn from yesterday to improve today? Where were the pitfalls? If you sinned (and WE did), review the circumstances and thoughts that led you to IT, ask for and accept the forgiveness that is offered and ask GOD to teach and protect you from the same mistake today. THEN MOVE ON!

Philippians 3:13
…but I focus on this one thing: Forgettingthe past and looking forward to what lies ahead,

Finally, load up on some TRUTH today.

Get into your WORD; equip yourself in the “present” to deal with that pesky past.

Feel an old temptation coming on? Tame it with TRUTH. Some old memories trying to distract you? Tackle it with TRUTH. Yesterday’s sin still swimming around in your psyche? Squash it with some TRUTH.

Remember this…

2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NLT)

16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. 17 God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.

Have a blessed day.

I love you all

Freedom Church

Pastor GDelaney