Do you have goals set for your life? Have you accomplished goals during your life? Do you look back over your life at your accomplishments? Do you relish them? Do they bring back fond memories? Do you live in those memories? Are you looking to the future?
It is easy to live in the past, relishing those good memories and accomplishments. They are familiar. We know the outcome of them. On the other hand, the future is unknown. It can be uncertain. But we know we cannot relive the past and must stride into the future.
Having the mindset of the Apostle Paul would serve us well. He did not live in the past. He eagerly walked toward the future. Paul had been an enemy of God, even as he thought he was doing God’s work. He had persecuted the early church until Jesus met him on the road to Damascus. After than turning point, all Paul could think about was telling others about Jesus.
Many people who had lived hard lives or lived through bad situations become the most passionate evangelists. They know what it is like to live without God in their lives. They know the uncertainty of not having God to lean on. They know what it is like to be reborn into Christ and the stability, peace, joy, comfort, and strength that is drastically different in Christ.
Yet, all of us can also experience this. Far too often we grow comfortable in our Christianity. Attending worship becomes rote behavior. It can become nothing more than a social event. Our relationship with God can become superficial. How do we change that? We can follow Paul’s advice by not living in the past. See each worship service as a new opportunity to grow our relationship in God. We can ask God to rejuvenate us through the worship service before we walk into the sanctuary. We can keep walking toward God each day.
I pray we all eagerly walk toward the future. I pray we stop living in the past. I pray each one of us will ask God to renew us each day and seek to grow a deeper relationship with him. Do not live in the past. Walk toward the future. Ask God to renew you each day. Seek a deeper relationship with God.
Philippians 3:13-14 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it, but one thing I have laid hold of: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Marty Pressey 