Breaking Free From Your Past

Breaking Free from Your Past

No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. Philippians 3:13

Press on, move ahead. Forget what is behind—whether it’s good or bad, whether anything made any sense at all, yesterday is done and gone. That was one of the things I always tried to impress upon my teams. No matter what happened on Sunday—even if it was a devastating, last-second loss—by Monday night they had to let it go. Focusing on last week’s game would not help them prepare for the next one.

We can’t replay what’s past or change what occurred. We want to think we can, we wish we could, often out of a sense of guilt or loss for whatever happened. It probably explains why so many popular movies have dealt with the subject, like Back to the Future, Mr. Destiny, or Sliding Doors. But as the apostle Paul recognized, we’re just not going to change the past.

And that’s why Paul makes the only rational decision he can make and offers the same to us, as well: he forgets the past and presses ahead. If there’s anyone who could have clung to the past—the decisions he’d made, the people who’d wronged him—it would have been Paul. After Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, he became hunted and persecuted with the same zeal with which he hunted and persecuted Christ’s followers. Now Paul followed Christ and served the believers called by Christ to touch the world. Time and again Paul was wrongfully imprisoned or beaten nearly to death for his new life, witness, and uncompromising testimony for Christ.

Where are you today in your journey with Christ? Are you stuck in the past, holding on to regrets, remorse, or feelings of guilt for things you should have done or people you should have spent more time with? Are you still holding on to grudges against someone else for something they did to you, which they have long ago forgotten?

Forget it, and press on to reach the heavenly prize of a continuing relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Uncommon Key > Release your past by giving it to Him, and press on to reach the heavenly prize of being in His presence forever.