CHAPTER
FOUR
Overcoming
Your Past
I do not consider, brethren, that
I have captured and made it my own [yet; but one thing I do [it is my one
aspiration: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies
ahead,
I press on toward the goal to win
the [supreme and heavenly prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us
upward.
Philippians 3:13,14
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I press on toward the goal to win
the [supreme and heavenly prize….
Philippians 3:14
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* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Are there things in your past that threaten your future, things of which
you are ashamed? Have you made mistakes? Have you failed at something? Are
To be honest, I think we all have some skeletons in our closet, things
we wouldn't want anyone to know. The good news is that God already knows
everything about your past and future, and He loves you anyway. More good news
is that we are all in the same boat. You are not alone in having a past that
you wish you did not have.
First, let me say that you can overcome the mistakes of the generation
that raised you or is raising you.
Divorce is very prevalent today, but that does not mean that if you
decide to get married when you are older, you have to get divorced at some
point. Marriage can work and be wonderful.
By the
way, God still approves of marriage, and He still disapproves of couples living
together in sin. If your parents lived in sin, took drugs, were alcoholics,
lived in poverty or did other things that brought pain into your life, that
does not mean you cannot overcome it.
I was sexually, verbally, mentally and emotionally abused throughout my
childhood and teenage years. My home was filled with violence, beatings,
cursing, anger and alcohol. I grew up in a total state of fear. I was told I
was no good and would never amount to anything. Yet in spite of all these
things, I have a
wonderful, joy-filled life today. Why? Because I made up my mind that I
would overcome my past, and I asked God to help me do it.
Don't just sink into a pit and decide to stay there all of your life
because of a past that was unsuitable.
God says we are to forget the past and press toward the future. His
mercy is new every day, and every new day is actually an opportunity to have a
fresh start in life.
Don't sit around and be depressed. Get up and do something about making
some changes in the things you don't like.
If you
had an abortion or a baby out of wedlock or were involved in some other kind of
wrong behavior, God will forgive you. He is forgiving and long-suffering. If
you are sincere in your sorrow about past mistakes, He is quick to forgive. If
you disappointed your parents, you can rebuild your relationship with them. If
they disappointed you, pray for them and look to the future, not the past.
Don't be bitter about the past; let it be a tutor for your future.
One of the good things about past mistakes is that we have already
gained valuable experience in what to do and what not to do; therefore, we don't
have to make those same mistakes again.
In His Word, God encourages us to be overcomers.1 In order to do that,
we must have something to overcome.
You can overcome your past!
I really want you to believe that. Satan wants you to believe that it is
too late, that you have made too many mistakes and that you are at a dead end.
Remember, in God there are no dead ends; every day is a new beginning.
When I look back at how awful my childhood and teenage years were, I am
absolutely amazed at how far I have come. One of the most important things I
had to do to change my life was stop feeling sorry for myself.
Self-Pity Is A Dead-End Street
You can
be pitiful if you want to, but self-pity will not open the door to powerful
living. Self-pity is a dead-end street. It takes you nowhere except into a
deeper pit of depression and despair. It causes you to turn in on yourself and
see only what is wrong with your life. It is a very negative and destructive
emotion.
For years I was plagued with self-pity over my past. Finally, I learned
that although I could not do anything about my past, I could do a lot about my
future.
Self-pity keeps you trapped in the things that have made you sad. You
keep reliving them over and over again in your thinking.
Some people feel so sorry for themselves they begin to believe that life
is not even worth living and so they contemplate suicide. Suicide is cowardly;
it is the easy way out. Facing life is the challenge that God created us for.
Sometimes people hurt so badly for so long that they go over the edge
mentally and commit suicide, but that was not the best answer for their life.
God could have helped them if they had been willing to let Him do so. They
could have had a wonderful life. They could have gotten over past mistakes and
disappointments, but it takes hard work and an investment of time. Perhaps
nobody ever told them they could overcome. Perhaps they felt so defeated they
just gave up. But I want to make sure you don't become a statistic along with
many other teens who are putting an end to their pain and confusion by
committing suicide.
You Have A Lot To Live For!
For I know the thoughts and plans
that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace
and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome.
Jeremiah 29:11
Don't sink into self-pity, but
rise to right living and a bright future. Keep saying to yourself, “My future
is so bright, I need sunglasses to look at it.”
Remember, there are many promises in God's Word about overcoming. As we
have already seen, God gives us His power to face and handle anything we need
to deal with.
It is
nice if you have someone to help you overcome your past problems, but even if
you don't, you and God together are a powerful partnership that can conquer
anything in life. Don't be impatient; just keep pressing forward. Remember,
little by little you will overcome and begin enjoying a new life.
Don't feel defeated by past sins, mistakes or failures. When you and I
ask God to forgive our sins, He also forgets them.2 It is harder for us to
forget them than for Him. We keep bringing up things from the past, while God
wants to get on with the future. He is progressive; He is not looking back.
God has offered you a new life, a brand-new start, and your future has
no room for your past mistakes and your sadness about them. No matter how bad
you have been in the past, there are those who have been worse, and God loves
them too.
It is easier to believe God loves other sinners than to believe He loves
us — but I challenge you to start
Forget The Past And Go Forward!
Jesus continually ministered to people with a sordid past. He said to
the woman who was caught in the very act of adultery,… go, and sin no more.3
The word “go” here indicates leaving the past and going forward. Jesus was
saying to this woman, Go forward, and don't make the same mistakes you made in
the past.
Jesus called many of His twelve disciples by telling them to leave what
they were doing and follow Him. He was saying to them, Whatever was in your
past, leave it, and I will show you how to live life the right way.
It is
necessary to leave something in order to go on to something else. Some people's
lives never go anywhere because they keep trying to drag the past into their
future.
For many years I suffered terrible condemnation over my past, but I
finally learned to let it go and go on. Each time I did something wrong, I
persecuted myself for days on end by feeling bad, sad and guilty. I repented
and asked God to forgive me, but I kept feeling guilty.
I am glad to say I am totally free from that method of handling my sins
and errors. I get up every day and do the best I can. I repent for my mistakes
when I make them and go on to the next day. That way, I make rapid progress;
otherwise, I am just spinning my wheels and getting nowhere.
Being stuck in the past, whether it is the past
from ten years ago or the past from yesterday, is just like being stuck in the
mud. You may put out all kinds of effort and yet go nowhere. Why? Because God
does not want you to drag your past into your future. He knows your past will
poison it.
Your past is called the past because it has passed. There is only one
thing you can do with your past — forget it! God has forgotten it, and so can
you.
Romans
8:37 tells us that we are more than conquerors through Christ Who loves us. See
yourself as a conqueror, an overcomer, not as someone defeated who can never
get over the past. It may take some time to retrain your thinking into the
future instead of the past, but you can do it — if you refuse to give up.
Everything Is Subject to Change — Except God
The Bible tells us that God does not change, 4 whether He is manifested
in the form of the Father, His Son Jesus or the Holy Spirit.5 His Son Jesus,
Who is the same as God, is the same yesterday, today, and
forever (Hebrews 13:8 NKJV). He is called the Rock6 because we can stand
firm on Him and His Word and know for certain that He won't change His mind
about loving us, forgiving us, helping us or anything else He has promised us
in His Word.
God does
not lie.7 Honesty is part of Him; it is embedded in His character. In the Book
of John, Jesus said that He is the Truth (John 14:6).
Everything else is subject to change, and we must accept that fact.
Things and people around us are changing all the time. This is one of the
reasons I know your future can change and not be like your past.
The promises of God are activated by believing in them.8 You must
believe that you can change, and so can your life. Say this out loud at least
once a day: Every day I get better and better in every way.
The weather changes. People change. Commitments, appointments, careers,
financial status, health — they are all subject to change. When things are
good, they can get worse if we don't do what we should do to take care of them.
We can be healthy and lose our health through neglecting our physical need for
rest, exercise, good nourishing food and fun. We can have financial prosperity
and through bad investments, overindulgence and other bad habits lose what we
have and actually end up living in poverty.
A good
relationship can be ruined and devastated by ignoring the responsibility side
of relationships. How many failed marriages could have been saved if the couple
had behaved toward one another after marriage the same way they did during
courtship?
It is amazing and actually disgusting how often we do the right thing
until we get what we want, and then don't do what we should to take care of it.
Taking care of what we have is
part of maturity.
A child may be given lots of things and lose them all by not taking care
of them. That is one reason children should be taught to work for what they
want in life — if everything is handed to them by someone else, they may have
difficulty appreciating what others have labored to get them.
Just as things can be good and get worse, they can also be bad and get
better. If you are not satisfied with your life, locate the root of your
dissatisfaction. You may be blaming others for it when, in actuality, you
should make some changes yourself.
It is very easy to blame, blame, blame. We can spend our whole lives
blaming, but it changes nothing. Taking ownership of our lives and being
responsible for our actions — past, present and future — is the
Things can change! You can change. Your circumstances, finances, health,
education, career, friends — they can all change.
Other people who know you may have difficulty believing that you can
ever change. Don't be influenced by their negative attitude.
When people we have been involved with have a negative record about us
etched in their minds, they become discouraged and find it hard to believe in
us. They don't want to be disappointed again.
But remember this: No matter how many people don't believe in you, God
does. He actually has more faith that you can change than you do.
We frequently look at ourselves and think there is no hope of change,
which is precisely what Satan wants. He wants us to be hopeless. But Romans 5:5
says that those who put their hope in God will never be disappointed or put to
shame.
Don't allow yourself to be discouraged by the discouragement and
unbelief of others.
In the
Bible, God changed David from a shepherd boy into a king. But before David
could ascend to the throne, he had to face many obstacles in life. One
was a giant named Goliath, who was a Philistine warrior. Nobody else had
been able to stand up to him due to fear, but David believed he could kill the
giant. His family, the reigning king and everyone who heard his positive
attitude tried to discourage him. They kept telling him what he was not: he
wasn't old enough, he didn't have enough experience or the right armor and
weapons. But David refused to be discouraged by their negativism. He encouraged
himself by remembering past victories, times in his life when his back was
against the wall, and with God's help, he overcame all the obstacles and
defeated the giant Philistine.9
I
encourage you to take the same attitude David did. Even if you cannot find one
human being to encourage you and believe in you, believe in God and in His
power in you to accomplish great things. Through God's power you can let go of
the past and press toward the future. You can believe in the power of change.
Always remember: Everything is subject to change — except God Who never
changes.
As a matter of fact, you are changing right now as you read this book.
You are getting new information inside you that will change your entire way of
thinking and your whole outlook on life.
Picking Up The Pieces
Don't make the mistake of discarding everything from your past. Pick up
the pieces and give them all
to God in prayer. You will be amazed what the Lord can do with
fragments. He delights in recycling things and making unbelievable new things
from the old.
You also have gained valuable experience from your past. You have
learned some things that you probably don't want to relearn by going through
them again. Take the wisdom you have gained and sow all the rest as seeds.
One time
the operators of a television station broke their contract with us. They had
been airing my program one day each week. Abruptly, without notice, they took
it off the air. It was our number-one income -producing station, reaching
millions of people. We had put a lot of money into airtime during the period we
had been on that station while waiting to build a good viewing audience.
Sometimes stations wait until someone like me builds an audience for
them. Then they change programming hoping to maintain the audience for what
they want to show. They sell the time for more money to another person or
company who wants to buy time. They sell it with a guaranteed audience that
someone else like me has paid for and built up. This, of course, is cruel. It
is also dishonest and very poor business ethics, but that is the way people are
sometimes.
This situation really hurt me. I
felt terribly wounded,
so much so that I cried. It frustrated me because I could not do
anything about it. I knew what had been done to me was wrong, but I just had to
take it. Then I got angry and could feel bitterness getting rooted in my mind
and emotions.
During this time God brought a great revelation to my heart: Nobody can
take anything from you if you are willing to give it and sow it as a seed. I
immediately knew what He was trying to show me because I understood the “seedtime
and harvest principle” in the Bible. I could feel robbed, taken advantage of,
angry and bitter, but none of that would change a thing. Or, I could release
the situation to God, sow it as a seed and ask Him to bring a harvest of
something better in my life.
I did release it, trusting God to be faithful to His Word. I felt so
good inside after releasing that situation.
God
cannot work in our situations unless we follow His ways. Although His ways are
quite different from the world's ways, the fact is that His ways work and
worldly ways don't.
About a year went by. Then one day a representative from the station
that had taken us off the air called and asked us to go back on the air five
times a week
— and at a better time slot than we had had previously.
You might say about this situation that I was left with a broken dream.
I picked up the pieces, gave them to God and He put them back together much
better than before.
The same thing can happen to you as you offer God the pieces and
fragments of your broken life. He specializes in fixing things that are broken.
He heals broken hearts, broken marriages, broken relationships and broken
dreams — He is the Great Physician!
No matter how good our life is, everything will not turn out as we
desire. To be successful in life we must learn to continually let go of the
past and go on to what lies ahead. It is a godly principle that we dare not
ignore.
I know scores of people whose lives have been ruined by bitterness,
resentment, hatred, regret, grief, sadness, depression, discouragement,
hopelessness, etc. But, thank God, I also know thousands who have followed
godly principles and are now enjoying life — and that more abundantly (John
10:10).
And I believe that you can do the
same thing.
That's one of the reasons I have
written this book —
to prod you to move up to another level and get you unstuck not only from where you're at, but from where you've been!
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