Just Thinking: When the past Clog Your Progress?

Just Thinking: When the Past Clog your Progress?

It was placed on my mind to write about how successes in one’s past could hinder progress this morning, I could not get to it before going to church, then one of the points itemized in the message was that, needless to say I got the message.

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Heb 11:26 – “He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward”

Phl 3:13 – “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead..”

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The author if the book of Hebrew was writing about Moses, who was a prince in Egypt and was raised in perhaps the best luxury the world knew then. Yet, Moses never referred to that in his new life and new assignment, he simply looked ahead on current assignment.

Paul the apostle, had a similar attitude. God had done tremendous things through him, for he Good News of Christ especially among Gentiles (educated and uneducated alike). Yet Paul, never rest on those laurels, he continued to look ahead for what is NEXT both here on earth and in eternity.

I have found that as humans, it is very easy for us to reminisce about the past, and those nostalgia keeps us in the past, whether good or bad memory. Israel did this about their time in Egypt and they remembered wrong (their embellished whatever was saved in their amygdala).

Many of us are not moving ahead in what God has for us, because we are stuck on what we did in the days of “70s Holly Rollers” or what God did through us as “Scripture union in college” or what God did in the early days of faith. Some of us are stuck with the bad days, that we are now remembering as good like Israel “we ate great foods for free” – yet they were slaves?

What happened yesterday is done, thank God for it, but don’t let it clog your brain, free your brain up and let it plan for the next assignment even if you are 80 years old (Moses did not start his assignment till he was 80).

Thank God for what he did in your life, whether He cleansed you from crap or used you as a baby like Samuel, but always look ahead for what’s next. Selah.