Forget it!

I've been involved in a few of conversations from various places over the last few weeks, and I've noticed a common theme: People look at their past experience and use it to colour their perception of their present selves.

What do I mean?  Well, we have a tendency to run into a situation and say thinks like "Oh I know I just won't be able to cope", Or we say
"I'm not good disciplined. I've never been able to do that".

Or "I'm never any good at anything".

We base this kind of thing on nothing but the past.   I understand why we do it, but don't realize a) the power and ability we have inside us and b) the power of our words.

When we got saved, we became totally new creatures; not just a refurbished model, but totaly reconstructed.  In his second letter to the Corinthians Pauls says this:
2 Corinthians 5:17 (TPT)
Now, if anyone is enfolded into Christ, he has become an entirely new creation. All that is related to the old order has vanished. Behold, everything is fresh and new.

It's hard for us to realize, because our physical bodies are the same as they were before we got saved, and our personality doesn't change, but our Spirit got totally sorted our, resurrected and transformed!  AND what's amazing is that transformation, doesn't stop there, if we let it, it will flow out to our souls and even into our physical bodies.

The bible talks a lot about our words. In Proverbs (18:21)it says that life and death are in the power of our tongue and James reiterates what great power there is in such a small part of our bodies.  We need to get ourselves lined up with the Word of God and understand that we have a new identity.

I know that some of us have been through terrible situations, and Satan has used those things to try to colour our perspective of who we are, to make us ineffective, but we don't have to stay that way!  We ARE more than conquerors! We need to understand the battle we are in as Christians isn't to win, that's already been taking care of - Jesus bound up the strong man, but he's sitting there as we go in to plunder his house and is spewing forth all sorts of lies and deceptions which we can ignore or we can sit and discuss with him and enter into.  For Christians the battle is all about holding onto our identity!

A great illustration of this is in Matthew 4. Satan tempts Jesus himself and what does he say
"If you are the Son of God..."  He went straight for his identity.  Even at the crucifixion they said to Jesus "If you're the son of God get yourself down from there."

The scriptures tell us that :

• We have been given access to wisdom (James 1:5)
• We have the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16)
• We have the power to get wealth (Deut 8:18)
• We have all spiritual blessings (Eph 1:3)
• We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Phil 4:13)

There are so many other truths that are just contrary to what we often feel about ourselves that I could go on forever, but the bottom line is we need to forget what is past.  Let the life of Christ in us, wash over those things.  When we feel something contrary to God's perspective, we need to go to meditating on what God's Word says and let that take root in our hearts.

I can almost here you now saying "But Abi, it's not that easy.  You don't know what I've been through" . You're right; I don't know exactly what your situation is, but that's why we have the Word of God!!

Have you been bullied or put down?  Look at Joseph: his family turned against him, mocked him, sold him and pretended he was dead.   Have you been afraid?  Look at Gideon or Esther.  Have you faced something that seemed so big you thought your life was over?  Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego or Daniel?   One of the reasons we have the Word is so we can learn from others (sometimes how not to do something, but learn all the same).

We need to let go of our past, of how we were treated or what happened and do what Paul did and press on towards Christ.  

Paul wasn't some wimpy religious guy hiding out in the synagogue!  Paul was a missionary, traveling around, facing daily persecutions, being beaten, arrested, plotted against, beaten some more, imprisoned and doing all that while dealing with the church!!  When he said forget what is past, he had reason to say "I can't go travelling any more they all want to kill me" or "it's too hard for me."  No!!  He forgot what was past and only focussed on moving towards Christ and reminded himself always who he was.

It's another reason why being in the Word and knowing it are so important.  They only way to truly identify a forged bank note is by being totally familiar with the real thing.  How can we identify areas where we are believing and speaking lies about ourselves if we don't know what the Word says about us?

Today I encourage you, it's time for letting the past go.   Turning your eyes to the Lord changing your vocabulary to line up with the truth.