Dealing with Your Past
Imagine that you are running in a race, and you’re trying to reach the goal and ultimately win the prize. But as hard as you try you can never get to the finish line because there is a heavy weight tied around one of your legs. You struggle to pull it along, but it slows you down and causes you to be so weary and exhausted that you are tempted to give up altogether. It doesn’t occur to you that this is something you don’t have to carry. It has been so much a part of you for so long that you never imagined life without it. Yet you can’t finish the race and secure the prize God has for you until you become free of it.
This scenario is true for so many of us. We are trying to run the race of life, but we are having trouble getting up to speed.
Stormie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Woman (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2002), 243.
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The truth is, you can never move into the future God has for you if you are continually stuck in the past. When you received Jesus you became a new creation. He made all things new in your life, and He wants you to live like it.
Stormie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Woman (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2002), 244.
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God says to forget the former things, but that’s not easy to do. How do we forget what happened to us? Do we need to have amnesia? Or a frontal lobotomy? Must we live in denial? Do we have to pretend that the past did not happen? Should we have part of our brain liposuctioned? The answer is no to all of the above. We just have to pray that God will set us free from the past so we can live successfully in the present.
Stormie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Woman (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2002), 244.
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One of the greatest mysteries of the Lord is how He can take the horrible, the tragic, the painful, the devastating, the embarrassing, and the ruinous experiences and memories of our lives and not only heal them, but use them for good.
Stormie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Woman (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2002), 244.
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The reason God doesn’t want to wipe your past completely out of your memory is because He wants to use that part of your life for the work He has called you to do. He can take the worst thing about your past and make it to be your greatest blessing in the future. He will weave it into the foundation of your ministry to the world, and out of it you will bring the life of the Lord to other people.
Stormie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Woman (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2002), 245.
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That’s why God wants you to learn from the past and witness firsthand how He can redeem it, but He doesn’t want you living there. He wants you to read your past like a history book, but not like a prophecy for your future. He wants you to forget those things that are behind you and reach forward to those things which are ahead (Philippians 3:13).
Stormie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Woman (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2002), 245.