In the work I do with pastoral counseling, we discuss the past and the way it has shaped our view of ourselves today, as well as our views of God. I do believe there is validity in doing this analysis to a degree, as it allows us to know why we do what we do presently, and also how to do something different as we move forward. So often we need to know the problem before we can allow God to heal the problem.
I do, however, believe that there is a limit to this, as continuing to go over and over the past ends up getting our eyes on the hurts and not on the way through. We must allow God to take the hurts of the past and replace it with our new identity. He has already done this, but we get to recognize how that plays out in our lives. Instead of continuing to believe we are worthless, shameful, unloved and unacceptable, we get to move into the reality that Jesus has made us worthy, shame-free, loved enormously, and acceptable completely. The more we focus on the past, the more stuck in it we become. So, it becomes a fine line between understanding the past and the effects on today and letting the past continue to control our present and future.
Mike Wells used to say that dwelling on the past and our pain for too long is incredibly boring. We get bored just over-analyzing all of it and getting nowhere. I want better, more and new. I don’t want to allow whoever hurt me to continue to control where I go now, both mentally and physically.
One thing that I keep hearing from God is, “Let’s move into the NEW!” God is always making people new, healing the pain of the past and allowing us to move forward as a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). We are made new, but we keep going back to the things of the past to try to make it work. We can do this by trying to “figure it out” and make sense out of the pain or hurt, which (in my experience) does not actually fix anything. We can try to obsess on the past messages and events in an attempt to convince ourselves they are not true. I think either of these methods, though, ends up with us focusing energy and thought on toxicity in our brains, rather than focusing on developing the new thought patterns that allow us to move forward in healing and health. We need a renewing of the mind. The good news is that this renewing of our minds isn’t up to us—it’s God’s job. We do get to be willing to allow Him to do so, and then the rest is up to Him.
I know that sometimes I get hung up on the hurts of the past, dwelling on every little thing someone has done to me. The problem with this is that I don’t fix any of those hurts, and I am stuck, unable to move into the new. I want to leave the pain of the past behind in order to move into the present of relationship with Jesus, allowing Him to heal the wounds and set me free from the prison of the past.
As we soon start the new year, I think of how God does things in new and different ways quite often, even while we are hung up on trying to recreate something we experienced before. I want to be willing to move into the new that God has for me, even when it might be a little scary because its unknown. I don’t want to limit His work in my life to things that make sense to me, because it might be streams in the desert and ways in the wilderness (like the verse below says). Sometimes I miss the new God is doing because it seems impossible or isn’t the way I would have done things.
I hope you will join me in taking off the pain of the past by not dwelling on it anymore, and moving into the brand new Life-filled something that God is bringing in our lives. No matter what the next season looks like, I am excited to see how the Shepherd walks with us and never abandons us in the new.
Stop dwelling on the past. Don’t even remember these former things. I am doing something brand new, something unheard of. Even now it sprouts and grows and matures. Don’t you perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and open up flowing streams in the desert. Isaiah 43:18-19