Living above your circumstances takes a healthy disregard for the past.
You cannot be looking backward if you’re looking forward. So Paul said, “If you’re going to succeed in your relationship with God, you’ve got to forget the things that are behind you.”
Was Paul talking about forgetting his past failures, or was he talking about forgetting his past accomplishments? I think the answer is both. To succeed in your relationship with God, first of all, you and I have to forget our past failures. The apostle Paul certainly had his share of failures. Before he was a Christian, he tortured and persecuted Christians. Can you imagine the flashbacks Paul must have had? After he became a Christian, Paul described his ongoing struggle with his sinful nature: “The good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want” (Romans 7:19). Can you relate to that? That was Paul’s experience. You may have your own share of failures. You were trying to make progress in your Christian life when all of a sudden Satan grabbed you and said, “Where do you think you’re going? You’re a sinner. Why do you think God would use you?” Satan loves to paralyze us with guilt. Yet Paul said, “If we’re going to make progress in our spiritual life, we have to forget our past failures.”
However, I think Paul also may have been thinking about his past accomplishments. In Philippians 3:4-6, Paul recounted all the good things he used to think would earn him a place in heaven. But then he said, “Whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ” (v. 7). Paul was saying that in order to move forward in your Christian life, you have to say good-bye to your past accomplishments.
Do you know Christians who are always living in the past? They’re trying to live off their salvation experience from decades ago. Or they keep going back to some past experience when God supernaturally intervened in their life. Paul was saying, “You have to put all that behind you if you’re going to move forward spiritually. Your relationship with God has to be new every day.” Jesus said it this way: “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). If you’re going to learn to live above your circumstances, you need to have a healthy disregard for the past.
From Pathway to Victory.
Many times were being slammed upside of the head with things we have done in the past, things we have confessed, repented of, and been forgiven of by Jesus Christ. It is important for us to drive a stake in the ground and not look back past it unless it is to rejoice and thank Jesus Christ for the change and new birth He gave us. Satan will slam us with the past and tell us we are still the same person, but this is not true, Jesus Christ made us a new creation and gave us a new birth and filled us with the Holy Spirit – the old is gone – everything is new. Baptism symbolizes the old being washed away and a new life emerges. This new life is not defeated or lessened by anything from our past.
When Satan throws the fiery darts of your past into your heart douse them with “The past is gone and I’m and born again and a new creation, forgiven by and through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. I am His and keep my eyes looking forward, not the past, to honor and glorify Him. I confessed, repented, and have been forgiven of these past sins and trust in, cling to, and rely on Jesus Christ. Thank you Lord Jesus.
