Don’t Live in the Past
Isaiah 43:18,19 So don’t remember what happened in earlier times. Don’t think about what happened a long time ago, because I am doing something new! Now you will grow like a new plant. Surely you know this is true. I will even make a road in the desert, and rivers will flow through that dry land.
Whether this past year has been a great one, an ordinary one or a downright shocker of a year for you, the fact remains that it’s pretty much done and dusted. Never to be repeated. Well, that’s the theory.
I know many a person who likes to dwell in the past. Either in “the good old days” when things were so much better, or by ruminating over their failures, their hurts, their losses.
How about you? Are you ready to let go of this past year, or are you planning on reliving it in your head and your heart, well into next year?
Look, there’s nothing wrong with treasuring fond memories or, indeed, allowing our mistakes and losses to teach us, soften us, guide us if you will. But there’s a line there somewhere, a line that all too many people cross all too readily, by just wanting to live in the past and never letting go.
And yet as this new year heads our way, my sense is that God has something new planned. Perhaps radically new, perhaps not, but something new, nevertheless, for you.
Now, the idea of God doing something new can be simultaneously exciting and frightening. Perhaps we should hang on to what we know. Perhaps it’s safer to dwell in the past than let go of it for an uncertain future.
Or perhaps God has some crazy-amazing plan for you, a plan that He wants you to lay hold of deep in your heart.
Isaiah 43:18,19 So don’t remember what happened in earlier times. Don’t think about what happened a long time ago, because I am doing something new! Now you will grow like a new plant. Surely you know this is true. I will even make a road in the desert, and rivers will flow through that dry land.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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