THE TRAP OF LOOKING BACK

Jonelle Maxwell

How many times have we’ve been entangled in the snare of our past? More than we would like to count and certainly longer than we wanted to stay.

Many times we have been tempted to and watched many others write books and build platforms based upon what happened in their past without truly being delivered from the past. Sharing our story can be good if it is used to bring deliverance to others, except one thing, it can keep us focused on what is behind us causing us to never embrace what is before us if not careful.

Paul spoke explicitly on this in scripture. We see how Paul understood although he had experienced much in his past, that God was calling Him to greater. Paul understood he had to leave his experiences and all he was taught behind.He had to leave the life he once knew in order to wholly give himself over to what God was calling him into. There was things he had to forget. This leaves us to understand that it is within our thought process. The proclivities of the mind.

It is our minds that hinder us. It is how we think. The scripture states, As a man think in his heart, so is he. “

Proverbs 23:7

We are what we think. If we think (meditate on) our past, then we will become our past. Whether good or bad. I am sure all Paul’s past was not bad. Also, as we think about it. Paul was not always Paul, but Saul before his conversion on the road to Damascus. I am sure Paul had plenty of moments of regrets, times of falling into depression of the past, and having to forgive himself for being the head of killing and persecuting Christians. Paul more than like had to be stripped of pride due to the theology he studied with the best of the best theologian of his day…Gamaliel, the leading Pharisee doctor of Jewish law. In other words, Saul/Paul was no dummy. He knew his stuff.

This is our story as well. We can have so much knowledge intellectually that put us in a place of pride. Does God want us to not be knowledgeable? Of course not! But, he does not want us putting our worldly studies above him.

Unfortunately, the are things we hold on to because it make us feel comfortable. We have found comfort in what we have been familiar with. Leaving things behind brings us into new things, new adventures, and new encounters in the things of God. God want to gives us the new, but we must be free from the chains of our past, whatever it is, and be willing to move on. The same way God called Paul into a higher calling, He is doing the same thing with us.

So, whatever areas are hindering you today, let it go and press into the the higher calling God has in store you.