Looking Ahead from Behind
FORGET the former things; do not dwell on the past. SEE I am doing a NEW THING!
Is 43:18-19
Funny thing about the PAST, it moves from back to front; from front to back. One minute the past is behind you and the next minute-there it is smack dab in your face–right in front of you!
In Surrendering the Secret, I share with women how important it is to look back at the past for the purpose of enjoying God’s plan for your future life and ministry. When we let Him, God will use our MESS to BLESS! My life is living proof of that. God has used the biggest mistakes of my life to create and build ministries that have saved many many lives both physically and spiritually.
He has used my mess to bless. If you give it to Him, He will use yours as well.
THEN there are the times–like YESTERDAY–when that old past of ours rears it’s ugly head and stretches it’s long neck around you from the back and blocks your view, blocks your confidence and blocks the heck out of your future. As Renee’ shares in the Devotional A Confident Heart, Chapter 4–“”When doubt washes over me, often it is because something has happened to activate my old emotions…”
As I shared yesterday, I am pressing through a ministry decision that has stirred up that ugly monster of PAST MISTAKES and PAST FAILURES and is creating potential to block the heck out of my future.
HOWEVER-THIS is the difference.
TODAY, I know what God says about me even when others want to focus on my past mistakes. God wants to keep my focus on HIM and who HE is in me. I am far quicker and stronger about evaluating those old emotions and fears of failure and laying them up against God’s Word and God’s promises. I have learned to SEE MYSELF as GOD SEES ME!
Unlike the PAST, when I would let PAST failures rise up in my heart and steal my CONFIDENCE., today, I have heard God say–Pat, “I will be with you”.
My old focus was on my past mistakes.
My new focus is on my AMAZING GOD who does not make mistakes and even when I make mistakes, will lead me into the place I should go–all the while, loving me like crazy!!
YEAH!! THAT’S A GREAT Word! If I must say so myself 🙂
Yes and Amen. Thanks for this today. I have been fighting my past lately yet I know I WIN with God on my side.
Angie, thank you so much for your transparency and for your kind comments. Stay the course friend. Blessings!!
Pat
Seeing me as God sees me…..how different our lives would be if we would try that. It really does work. We are blessed, chosen, adopted, forgiven and redeemed. That’s a really pretty picture, if you ask me.
Leah–YOU BLESS ME! I so wish we were next door neighbors 🙂
xoxo
pat
I am reading this tonight sitting in the living room of a foreign mission house, as part of a mission team, in the same city and country where 20 years ago I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I have seen God do a supernatural work in my heart over this past year to get me to the point of facing my past in this way. God’s ways are absolutely amazing. Your post is another conformation for me that He is going to use my past failures for His glory. And that I have to practice listening to the Voice of Truth over the voice of the accuser! Thank you Pat!
Wow Lori! What an awesome God huh? My sweetest place of ministry is to see Him use me to share with women who have made the same bad choices, or are AT RISK of making them. Our Mess, His Bless!
xoxo
pat