God is more interested in our
future than our past.
We can know this is a fact
by the following: because we are blessed by the privilege of a living,
breathing life—the evidence of which is a brand-new day—we can know that God
has plans for our present, and, assuming the present continues as it becomes
the future, God has plans for that too.
God knows that our past
can just as easily hem us in as it can liberate us.
What, then, is of God?
Surely we can know what is
of
God by how it feels in our deepest, most God-congruent self.
The things that hem us in
tend to be condemnatory by effect. We feel the weight of guilt; the burden of
shame. But the things that truly liberate us are of God, because they’re the sustainable
things.
The things of the past are
fuel for our futures, and God can use anything.
There is no condemnation
for those sincerely
in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). They who are sincerely living for him who saved
them are gifted the grace to know the forgiveness of God and the wisdom to know
that this is from God. They believe it boldly.
They look to their pasts,
and the shaming that they’ve endured at the hand of the evil one, and they
accept they were duped. We’ve all been there. We’ve all faced the accusations
of the one who would discourage us so much as to convince us to flee from our
only real hope and help: God.
When we can access our
pasts because we’re beyond shame and guilt, we suddenly see God’s use for it.
Indeed, this is how God makes good out of the things suffered for those who
love him. God is faithful in this. There is nothing that precludes us from the
blessings of this reconciliation in our practical circumstance.
God can use the conveyance
of sin for his glory by taking that past thing and working it for our and others’
good into our futures. There is no glory in the sin, but there is unfathomable
beauty and glory in the thing that God makes out of it. Let’s never doubt it!
***
The things of the past are
fuel for our futures, and God can use anything. The present and future are more
important than the past because they’re loaded with potential, but the past is
done. God wants us to be honest about our past; then he can heal us and use it
for his glory.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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