Previous
Daily
Devotional
About gaining and losing from the past…
Hosea 4:6 …my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. (NIV)
Our yesterdays define our present in the here and now. Our present in the
here and now defines our tomorrows. Who we are in the here and now, what we
think in the here and now, how we are in the here and now, how we feel in the
here and now, our visions, hopes, and dreams in the here and now, all grow out
of our past. In our past rests both the good and the bad. In our past we find
both the blissful and traumatic. What we are supposed to do in the here and now
is learn from the past but leave the past where the past belongs…in the past.
We cannot relive or redo our yesterdays. We cannot go back and make what
happened not happen. We cannot go back and make what did not occur somehow
magically become our reality. What we can do with our past is siphon off the
very best of what was good in the past and lose the rest. What we must do is
capitalize on every second of the goodness of our past and lose the bad. Our
past is full of God's will and Satan's evil. Our past is full of our desire to
sin and our desire to be righteous. Our past is full of our successes and our
failures. Our past is full of the presence of God, even when we did not know He
was present. In all our past has been for us and can be for us, our past is a
way of gaining ground in the here and now. Our past can teach us the way of
wisdom. Our past can guide us today. Our past can teach us to avoid mistakes and
to do what is the best and most productive thing. God has given each of us a
memory, an ability to remember. It is God's wonderful gift of memory we can use
to further God's will by remembering and using both the good and the bad from
our past. Perhaps we might think we are to forget the bad and only remember the
good. However, the bad can teach us what is good. The bad can be a source of
wisdom. The bad can help us be more of who God wants us to be. We are to
remember and use the bad of our past for God's glory. When we remember and use
both the good and the bad of our past we become more of His child. |