past, present, & future

Our past circumstances tend to have a significant impact on our current circumstances. The past bleeds into the present. It’s so easy to take a negative situation or experience that happened in the past and carry it with you in present and future experiences. When you carry these negative emotions with you, it affects your thoughts and actions. You begin to behave in a way that protects yourself from the past outcome. But the outcome of your past is not the outcome of your future. 

For me, this has been quite the journey. My faith has radically changed over the past year. It’s been an up-and-down battle. I went from having complete faith that God is going to turn a situation for my good, to completely lacking any faith in God. Now, my first mistake was making it about me. It isn’t about me and never was about me. I let the outcome that didn’t line up with the way I thought it should stain the way I viewed God. This wrong impression of God prevented me from being able to see God’s true character. 

We serve a good God. A god of provision, a god of protection, a god of faithfulness, and so much more. So why is it so easy to forget that in moments of pain? Because the moment things aren’t going the way we think they should, opens up room for the devil to work. And that space will only grow bigger the more we let our past perspective destroy our current perspective. 

I’ve learned that we have to be able to remain faithful in our current situations regardless of our past. I wanted to share this thought that I had during a worship night this past week. Excuse the messiness of the thought, it comes from a moment where I had to pause and extinguish the doubt before the doubt extinguished my faith in God. 

I have to be able to remain faithful in a situation and not turn to doubt based on past experiences. I have to remain faithful that god is faithful. I have to believe that God wants the best for me and walk in that belief. I can’t let past experiences dictate current and future experiences. God is faithful. I serve a faithful god. I refuse to let past experiences tarnish my reality or prevent me from being faithful in any circumstance.”

I love the verses Psalm 27:13-14– “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Remain confident in the Lord. You may not feel like you are seeing the goodness of God in the middle of your storm, be patient. The beauty on the other side of the storm is worth it, speaking from experience. You’ve got to get through the storms in order to see the rainbow on the other side. 

It’s not easy. It’s painful and messy. But we serve a God who can move mountains, can bring the dead back to life, and feed 5,000 people from five loaves of bread and two fish. There’s nothing He can’t do. Don’t let the past dictate your future. You serve a faithful God, who can turn any situation for good.