“I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.” (Philippians 3:12-14 MSG)
One thing that stands out in my mind, of what Paul said, you can never forget your past if you don’t have a goal. A goal keeps you looking forward, not backward. He didn’t sit around thinking about his murderous past. My Pastor, Bishop Paul Lanier, said one time in his message that was so profound, “You have to forgive your way forward.”
Paul set a goal to reach his calling from the Lord, to redeem the wasted time of his wrong thinking in the past. He thought he was yoked correctly in the beginning as a Pharisee, but he was yoked as an oxen and donkey pulling in a total different direction than God.
How many times have we found ourselves reliving our past over and over again? Well…if I had done this, or said that, may this would have worked. It would have not worked, because for the most part, God wasn’t in it. God doesn’t deal with the should’ve. could’ve, would’ve, but He deals with the right here and the right now. We have to make up in our minds that we are forgetting those things in the past and pressing toward those things God has ordained and call us to do. We can’t do all that bound up with soul ties. God’s plan for us succeeds anything that we could fathom in our minds..
“For I Am knows the thoughts, plans, and intentions the I AM thinking towards you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jerimiah 29:11 ONM)
This is an excerpt from chapter one “Waking to the Need of Soul Restoration”….read more in my book The Holy Temple of God.
