Forget the Past :: Deeper Devotion

by Tim Wade

Philippians 3:13
Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead.

When I was a kid I lived in Texas for the better part of four years in a nice three bedroom white house. It was here that we had a cat names Moses, another one later on named Aaron, and a ton of lizards – not by choice. I remember playing basketball in the backyard and kicking a soccer ball into the neighbor’s fence so many times that it nearly collapsed from all of the abuse. I also remember the weather being hot, especially our last summer before moving to North Carolina.

A block from the house was the elementary school that my younger brother and I walked to and from each day, for nearly four years. We would cut through the alley which would drop us out right in front of the main steps, and into the center of the building. Once inside you would jog a little to the right, down a small flight of stairs past the boy’s restroom, which would then lead you into a large room that tripled as a gymnasium – though it was never used for that – the cafeteria, and the school auditorium. Oh, what memories.

But none of this is real. Nothing that I just described to you really existed. You would be hard pressed to prove the house, the school, or the memories, for they tore down the school two years I left and moved to North Carolina. Ten years after that the house was condemned, and moved. All that is left now in either place are blank patches of brown Texas dirt. Everything is gone.

When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, our sins are removed as far as the East is from the West. Our old nature is wiped clean, nothing of our former self exists, and we are new creations in Christ. You’d be hard pressed to prove who you were before Christ, now that your past in under the blood of the Lamb. Now the rest is up to you. You have not yet arrived at your final destination in Jesus. Your journey has only just begun. Now you must forget what lies behind, and reach forward to what lies ahead.

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