Our grandson's gaining weight, and is he ever going to be glad! (Unlike his grandfather who finds weight gain depressing). Yes, soon he will be 20 pounds. And that means his parents will turn his car seat around. No more looking out the rear window.
And that's a great feeling. You don't have to keep looking back at where you've already been. It's all about looking at where you're going now.
That's a change that's good news for even us grown up kids. Turning your "seat" around. Moving past the depressing view you get when you keep looking back at where you've been. Especially when what you see is the hits, the hurts and the hard times in your past. Every time I look through that window, clouds roll in and cover the sun. If I look back a lot, I'll end up looking down even more.
I flew to a meeting recently and had that same predictable experience at baggage claim. No, not a missing suitcase - I'm talking about the mystery suitcase. The one that just keeps going round and round on the baggage carousel, forever unclaimed. We just keep watching the same old baggage go by again and again.
Sadly, too many folks live their life that way - watching that same old baggage over and over again. And triggering those all-too-familiar - and often disabling - feelings of resentment, anger, depression, "poor me," and victim-itis.
Recently, my wife and I were talking with a woman who's been hurt and wounded a lot - and as she rehearsed it, we could watch her wilt visibly. I had to share with her a bold and hopeful alternative from the Bible - one I've fallen back on so many times. It's a "catch me, I'm falling" prescription for us when the old baggage circles back on our radar.
God says, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! It is springing up before you. Do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:18-19). "Dwell." Interesting word. Don't live in, camp out on, and stay in what happened in the past. The enemy of my soul, the devil, loves to have me living in the past - because it can't be changed. And dwelling on what can't be changed equals despair.
While our enemy keeps pointing backwards, our Savior keeps pointing to what's ahead. "I'm doing a new thing." But those who insist on rehashing the old things will be looking the wrong way and miss God's new thing.
God doesn't ask us to deny our past. But He tells us we don't have to be defined by our past. He invites us to release all the hurts - and all the hurters - to Him. To leave justice and payback to Him. To open up the darkest locked closets of your past, to drag all that's ugly there into the light and to face it once and for all - with Jesus standing there by your side. And then let the healing begin.
For two thousand years, wounded people have found Jesus to be the Lord of New Beginnings. First, He makes us a "new creation in Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:17) - with rewired desires, self-worth, hopes and a passion to live pure. He says, "The old has gone; a new life has begun." That's the rebirth miracle He made possible by dying to cancel and forgive every sin ever committed - including mine.
Jesus forgives what no one else can forgive and heals what no one else can heal. With Jesus running things, your life becomes what He's going to do for you and through you - rather than what others have done to you.
You really can turn your seat around. It's much better to see where you're going than where you've already been. Just ask my grandson.
| You may be at a point where you're ready for a new beginning - where the hurts and failures of the past no longer define who you are. That's when it's time for Jesus. If you'd like to know more about how to begin a rebirthing relationship with Him, I encourage you to visit us at YoursForLife.net. It's a hope place. |