One of the greatest obstacles
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One of the greatest obstacles to overcome in life is our past. Many times our future is dominated by what happened to us in the past. In our cars are a large windshield and a very small rearview mirror. The reason the front glass is so large is you really need to see where you are going and the reason that the rearview mirror is so small is that you only need to glance at where you’ve been. Imagine with me if our cars had a huge rearview mirror in a very small area to look forward. That would be a wreck waiting to happen. The truth is many times that’s how we live our lives, so consumed by the past that we can’t see the brightness of the future. I’m not in anyway minimizing what may have happened to any of us in the past. There’s a lot of terrible things that people can do to other people. The reality is though if that still consumes my life then they are still controlling my future. Corrie Ten Boom said, “Forgiveness is setting the prisoner free, only to find out that the prisoner was me.” You might forgive someone and they never
even acknowledge it but it will give you freedom from the power that their actions held over your life. We can learn a lesson from everyone’s actions-what to do, or what not to.
Our past is an integral part of who we are, and many things done in the past have had a positive influence on us. These things we want to embrace and cherish, but there are also things that have been done that are very hurtful. It’s these things that we want to be set free from. The beautiful thing about the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it set us free from our past. One writer said, “Reminding me of my past is like robbing a house that I used to live in, I don’t live there anymore.” The Bible reads, “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” This clean break from our past through the Cross of Christ has a liberating affect on our future. The apostle Paul said, “Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.” In life, it’s important to know the truth that we must learn how to detach in order to attach. Oh, great thing happens when a person repents! They turn away from the old, and they turn toward the new. We can learn great lessons from the past, but we can’t live there.
