08-08-08

So, I was thinking about some things yesterday and am just now getting a chance to write some things down. Philippians 3:13 says "Forgetting those things that are behind reaching forward to those things that are ahead." I was speaking to someone yesterday and I was pressed to think about the significance of the date and God's plans for newness in our lives. I thought about the verse in Philippians, because Paul, who I usually take issue with, asks believers to do something that is honestly very difficult. We are asked to forget about the things that made us who we are today. This is not an absent-minded type of forgetting that happens when someone asks you to pick something up from the store and you forget. No; it is the type of forgetting that takes practice. You are to consciously decide that all that has happened before, no matter how great or how horrible is nothing in comparison to what God has for you in God's divine will.

The problem is that in consciously forgetting, we come up with seemingly valid reasons why we should remember. After all, every situation we've had to encounter has worked together to create the quilt of our lives. However, we sometimes build alters to our pasts and worship the experience way more than the God that brought us through them. We act as if we are the authors of our lives instead of participants in the "thoughts and plans" God has for us. We have to be so desperate for the better ending that we are willing to give up all of our allegiances to our past. Right now, I am fighting with this issue myself. I feel so badly that I need to have my feelings about the past justified that I have held on to something and someone who in the end really does not matter. God has already chosen my inheritance for me (Psalm 47:4), but I was comfortable in being angry and hurt that I was unwilling to give it up for the greatness God has in store.

At any rate, I say all that to say that new beginnings are not necessarily tied to a date, but they are tied to seasons- kiros- divinely appointed points in time. I feel strongly that this is a season where God wants to restore the years that we've sown in tears and the years that the worms and locusts took away (Joel 2:25). It's up to you to walk into your season.

Peace