God has given us this moment to live fully, to love deeply, and to lay hold of all He has for us. Yet, all too often, our present moment is diminished by one or all of these things:
• Past baggage
• Fear of the future
• Squandering the present moment (through un-appointed work or time wasters)
God can truly redeem the pain of our past! He is not bound by time! He is with us and for us and is powerfully able to heal every wound and to forgive every sin. When we are in Christ, the only things from the past that belong in our hearts are the redemptive pieces; the places where God healed, saved, delivered and restored. Because that’s what He does. That’s who He is.
We have to fight this battle. The enemy doesn’t get to drape the heavy blanket of regret and condemnation on us. Jesus paid it all! All to Him we owe! We get to walk free because He won the victory. Oh, the joy of really grasping the gift He offers us.
It’s time to shake the shackles off of our feet and to leave the past in the past.
And then there’s the fear of the future. We can rejoice because God’s already been there. And He has made us a promise. For those of us in Christ, we will go from strength to strength, from glory to glory. We will shine ever brighter until the full light of day. We have nothing to fear because our God is with us. It’s in our spiritual DNA to grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. We will endure hardship, yes, but more importantly, we will be victorious.
I’ve battled fear and anxiety as long as I can remember. But I’m finally coming into a fresh realization of God’s grace and loving provision over my life. It blesses Him when I turn my back on worry. So, I seek to bless Him with my trust every time I’m tempted to worry.
Okay, we’ve covered past regrets and future fears. Now let’s chat for a moment about time wasters in the present. Oftentimes our time wasters are directly correlated to our past regrets and our future fears. Those wretched tapes dominate our thoughts and we medicate so as not to feel them or face them.
But God has offered us everything we need to be fully present in the moment. In fact, the hosts of Heaven gasp when they see us drink muddy water (when pure, healing, life-giving water has been offered to us). Read this passage from Jeremiah 2:12-14:
‘The heavens are shocked at such a thing and shrink back in horror and dismay,’ says the Lord. ‘For My people have done two evil things: They have abandoned me – the fountain of Living Water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all.’
It doesn’t have to be this way! Let’s not ‘shock’ Heaven by defaulting to lesser sources of life. We have things to do in this life and the backing of Heaven with which to accomplish it all.
May we give God room and space to unravel the snarls from our past. He will surely bring order and peace where there once was turmoil and unrest.
Trust that He has a plan to ‘prosper you; and to give you a hope and a future’ – because He absolutely does.
