It’s Friday…Let’s Get Over Them

There’s an attitude that is perhaps most subtle in corrupting our perspective; It’s the sense of regret we feel over missed opportunities and past failures. It plays a devastating mind game that makes us wonder what life would have been like “if” – if we hadn’t fallen, if so-and-so hadn’t hurt us, if we had turned right instead of left, if, if, if. 

“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.” (Joel 2:25)

It’s a game that will destroy us, always turning our gaze backward, never forward and never upward. Though the locusts have consumed our past, we extend an open invitation for them to consume our present and eventually our future. We live in our regrets far too easily.

What’s the point of that? Are we trying to change the past? Are we telling the Sovereign God that He has missed a chance to make things better for us? We are as nearsighted looking backward as we are looking forward.

·       We forget that the God who called Joseph to the political apex of Egypt first allowed his brothers to betray him and a prison to hold him captive.

·       We forget that the God who put David on the throne let him hide out in caves for years.

·       We forget that the God who raised Jesus from the dead sent Him to die in the first place.

·       We forget that the deliverer Moses was first an exiled stutterer.

·       We forget that the apostle Paul was first the rebel Saul.

·       We forget that the powerful-preaching Peter was the first spineless self-preservationist.

All of these could have lived with an obsession about the “locusts.” None of them did, and God did amazing things through them.

Do you have regrets? Who doesn’t. But let’s not be gentle with them. Let’s Get Over Them. Too many people have trained themselves in paralysis. Too many people are committing a slow, painful suicide, dying past deaths over and over again until they’ve run out of life. 

Here’s Truth: As children of God, He has removed our past from us, separating us from our sin as far as the east is from the west and comforting us more deeply than anyone has grieved us. And to the extent we dwell on those past events, we’re out of touch with what is more real. Let’s base our lives on Truth. It’s calling us forward.

Have a refreshing weekend. Make it better by worshiping The Lord with those who relish what He has done, is doing, and who don’t dwell on the past because they see how bright their future in Him is.

All For Jesus – Nothing More, Nothing Less, Nothing Else.

“He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, The King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see, to Him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.” (1 Timothy 6:15b-16)