Imagine this! One day you are driving on the highway, and you are completely focused on trying to
reach your destination, but you are constantly looking in your rear-view mirror. In other words, you are trying to drive your car while looking behind you. Sounds like an accident waiting to happen, right? Well oftentimes, many of us are guilty of doing this as we walk through life. We focus so hard on something in our past that it begins to affect our future. And often, the experiences and situations that we are focusing on are negative, in a sense. It may be a tragic situation, such as a death of a friend or family member, or it may be something that caused deep pain and regret. Whatever it is, it has now become a distraction. According to Webster, a distraction is defined as an object that directs one’s attention away from something else, and focusing on the past does exactly that.
To illustrate this, I will share an experience from my own life. In 2016, I became a born-again believer after repenting from my sins before the Lord Jesus Christ and accepting Him into my life. In my past, I chose to participate in sin because that was my nature. I lived a life that was the exact opposite of holiness and righteousness, and I knew I was headed down the road towards eternal damnation. However, when you give your life to the Lord, you accept that He has forgiven you, and you are cleansed by His blood from all sin. You are justified, meaning it is as if you had never sinned. God’s Word says it this way, “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18). However, I had a hard time accepting that because I was fixated on my past sin life. Scripture says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). This tells me that because I was still mediating on and identifying with who I was in the past, I was negating my salvation in Christ. Again, the scriptures tell us, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Once I grasped this, I was able to truly accept the sacrifice that Jesus had made for me on the cross. I stopped looking back and began to focus on what His plans were for my future. For the first time in life, I was about to move forward! Just as Paul said in Philippians, “…but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14). This is how I live my life now. So, to all of you, I admonish you to stop letting the past be a distraction and focus on your future because within it lies the real you. God bless!
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