Live looking forward

Genesis 19 features Lot's wife... One look back at the place God didn't want her to be, and boom, she's a pillar of salt. Now, each of us has our fair share of 'What Jesus Would Not Do' moments. We're saved and set free, but we'll still do broken things sometimes. But keeping our eyes fixed back on these broken things can do serious damage. Keeping our guilt and failings in mind, and rehashing them with regret, can stop us in our tracks. That's not at all what God intends. He forgives us so that we can be made new and respond in a new way.

Then there's the other end of the spectrum - joking, or even boasting, about our 'old lives'...just as dangerous. If we're comfortable enough with past sin to flaunt it, we're not seeing Jesus' perspective on the stuff that tries to separate us from him.

The bottom line is, the promises that sin made to us back then were false, and they're false now. Jesus has taken care of it all. There's no reason to keep our past with us. It's time to thank God and look ahead with hope: 'If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here' (2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV).



So what now? Forget what you've 'failed' at. Write a list of things you'd like to do, or become, by the end of the year. Stick it on a wall and tick them off over the coming months. Live looking forward.





— SCRIPTURE —

'The old has gone, the new is here.' 2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV
— SOULFOOD —

1 Sam 18:1-20:29, Matt 23:13-22, Ps 95, Pro 16:31-33