Do you ever feel like you are walking around with an extra 5, 10 or even 25 years on your shoulders? Yeah, a lot of us do…or have. Why do we do this? We aren’t meant to. Let me explain.
In the past couple of weeks I have spent some time with special friends – God loving friends – who have been hammered lately by their past. We all have one before Jesus, right? So why has the enemy been so intentional recently on reminding us of our past? Well, I don’t think it is any more now than it ever has been. He is a liar. He is a deceiver. That is just what he does. His whole goal is to discourage us and deceive us into believing God doesn’t really love us. What a bunch of hooey, huh?
So listen, I carried a lot – I mean a LOT – of shame (and guilt) around for far, far too long. Shame I was never meant to carry. I won’t go into the less-than-rosey details here…this time. I will tell you that NONE of us are meant to carry our past. Y’all, Jesus carried the past of us all on that cross. When we “carry” it, it is almost as though we don’t trust and believe the torture and torment he endured was enough. Yep, I said it. That’s deep. Read it again. Go ahead, the next paragraph will wait. 🙂
Friend, if you are carrying something from your past that is keeping you from your future…STOP. It is likely affecting your marriage, children, job, the calling God has placed on your life. Stop – just stop. I mean, literally stop right now. Stop and ask our heavenly daddy to break it off. To release that shame and guilt so you can truly walk in freedom. And then don’t pick it up again. Just don’t. Trust that what Jesus endured was enough so you don’t have to carry it to.
Romans 8:1-3 tells us (and I’m paraphrasing) that we don’t have to carrying our past and condemnation because when we are in Jesus we have a life set free from the law of sin and death. Y’all! That is incredible. When God sent Jesus to die for us everything was covered. We don’t have to – and we shouldn’t – carry around sins from the past.
Psalm 103:12 (again paraphrasing) says our sin is as far away as the east is from the west (and, in another translation, we are separated from our sin as far as sunrise from sunset). Our human minds cannot even fathom that distance.
Let’s decide to leave the past here. Right now. I am going to pray over you and ask that God remove the pressure and pain of the past and that you learn to walk in His grace and freedom.
Daddy God, we love you. We thank you for who you are. Right now I pray over my sisters and brothers. God, I pray that you will lift the burden of our pasts. That we will learn to walk in your freedom. That we will accept that what your son did for us on the cross was enough to cover our past and our future. God, I pray that my friends will leave their past here, right now, and that they will choose not to pick it up again. God, you are a loving father and you want us to walk in freedom and with your peace. We love you, Daddy. Amen.
Love you friends.
Warriors and Ashes 