Your past informs your future, it does not determine it. - Me I've made more mistakes than I can count, and I continue to miss the mark in my pursuit of divine perfection each and every day. I am a flawed and frail individual, and you can't really look down on me because of that, because we can truthfully say the same thing about you. Any one of us can go digging into someone's past and find their errors of judgment, their mistakes, and when they embraced the path of self-destruction. However, most of us don't need anyone else to rehash our life's greatest misses, because we often keep that lowlight reel playing in the background of our own minds, using the “game film” to justify why we can’t live at a certain level, why we can’t achieve a certain goal, or why we can’t be a certain type of person. There is an inherent contradiction in identifying with the weaknesses of our past life rather than the strength that abounds in our present life in Christ. It’s as if we are comfortable calling ourselves Christians now, but we still hold on to our guilt and shame from our previous weaknesses and mistakes. This isn't what God wants for our lives. Everyone has a past, and everyone has skeletons in that closet. But those are skeletons. Not living beings, not ghosts...they are skeletons. That past is dead, put away in a closet, and you’ve grown a lot, changed a lot, and learned a lot since those things died away from your life. They only live on in your memory, so if we’re going to go and get what God has predestined for our lives, one of the primary things that has to happen is that we each have to understand that the value of our past in found in the lessons we have learned, and that if we apply what we’ve learned, our future will be bigger, better, and brighter than what we could have accomplished before we stepped into the light. As we proceed through 2013, I challenge myself and I challenge you to apply the lessons of Philippians 3:12-16 to your daily life. Learn the lessons from your past failures, commit your future endeavors to the Lord, and don’t look back. Speak life over yourself and believe what you are saying. Call yourself “blessed” and believe it. Call yourself “healed”, call yourself “delivered”, and believe it. Walk it, talk it, and breathe it. Then, watch this year unfold unlike any other. Only let us hold true to what we have already attained and walk and order our lives by that. - Philippians 3:16 (AMP)
