Vision For Your Life And Ministry

One way that hardship becomes our teacher is that it helps us to remember the values that God has burned into us. God teaches us and it is still within His values to allow the hardships that we've experienced.

God burns those things into you. Some people learn that a stove top is hot by just telling them, "That's hot, don't touch it." And people go, "Okay". Some people don't learn that way. Some people have got these little rings on their hands and they go, "I really don't want to repeat that again!"

And guess what. They have those signs of remembrance, those little scars of "where I burned myself." Those teach us, "I really don't want to repeat that! And there are some things that we only learn that way.

Wouldn't it be great if we could just learn that stuff and without having to go through it? Wouldn't that be wonderful, but that's not reality. You're going to learn it as God burns it into you. And when you look at the past, you will see what God has done. God has burned what you believe and what you are committed to and what you will die for. He's burned that into you from the past.

Your values come from the past. What you believe about you. What you believe about God. There are things in your life that you will die for. There are some things that you will be so tenacious that you will not give up; that you will not quit; that you will not stop and a lot of those things, you have those convictions. You have those values because of things that happened in your past. Those are values that God burned into you. So we need to look into our past and begin to examine what are the values that God has put in my life.

Looking back to Jeremiah 29:11: "For I know the plans that I have for you." God knows the plans that He is weaving you into. You are a part of God's creation. You're a part of God's plan and the truth is that we need to look at the past in order to see where we are going in the future. This is not to say that the past has power over us, it doesn't. A lot of times people will quote me the verse in Philippians 3. What did Paul, the apostle, say? He said, "I put away the things of the past. I look forward to the things that are ahead."

He sure does do that. But if you read that chapter you will see before he says that, he goes through a whole list of things that he was involved in before he ever said that. Did he remember his past? You bet he did! He said "I was a Pharisee of Pharisees. I was a zealot to the maximum." And he goes through all those things and all the degrees and all that he had done in Philippians 3. And then he said, "but all that I have done I consider garbage compared to knowing Christ. And what I do now, I put these things behind and I move on ahead."

He didn't say that these things are just wiped from his memory as if they never happened. No, no, he's saying that those things don't have power over him anymore. Those things don't rule him. They don't dominate him. Yes, they are part of who he is. He would not have been able to do what he did had he not had those. The education and everything that he had, it opened doors for him. If he hadn't had that, he wouldn't have been able to minister and to reach a lot of people that he did. God used that. He looked back. God made him that way. God designed him that way and that helped him to see how he could move on. But that in the past will not have power over him now.

That's the perspective of understanding the past. You see, you need to remember what God brought you through. You need to remember it to see how God did it; to see that He's not left you alone; He's not forgotten you. He didn't leave you. He didn't desert you. You didn't get to a place where you were just down far enough that you said, "well, forget Him." You never got that far. God was always there. His grace was always sufficient. God brought you through that.

You need to see God's faithfulness. Because if God brought you this far, God will take you on the rest of the way. So you look to the past to build confidence. Confidence in God. Confidence in what He is going to do. To move on into the uncertain future, you need that confidence. You look at the past so that you don't redo the mistakes; so you don't have to relearn some of those lessons that God worked so hard to teach you.

And you look at the past to look at the values that God has burned in you, so that you can move on to the future. God doesn't want you to live in the past. He just wants you to remember it. He doesn't want the past to have any power over you either. Some people can't move on to the future because the power of the past is so overwhelming. But I want you to know that it is God's will that the past not rule you or dominate you. You don't have to stay there and you don't have to live there anymore. You can be free. You can be free.

Today, God wants to give you a proper perspective of the past. He wants to give you that so that you will remember. Some of you say, "I don't want to go there. I am doing the best I can to forget the past. Why do I want to remember anything?" You say that because the past still has power over you.

But God wants to bring you through the process of being free from the past. For some of you God's going to free you of that bondage of the past very quickly. With others of you it's not going to be so quick. God's not through burning the values in you that He wants you to have. So He's going to bring you through that process. So I don't think that today is the magical day that if you make a commitment that your past will not have power over you anymore. I am not saying that. But that I am saying that today is a good day to get started of getting free of the past. And today is a good day to have a proper perspective of the past. Today is a good day for that.

Are there are some things that you need to let go this year? Are there some bitternesses you need to let go? Are there some people that you need forgive? Are there some things that you have been hanging on to that you need to be giving up to God? Today is a good day to start that process.

I want to challenge you to begin thinking back upon your life. I want you to think about the things that God has done and brought you through. I want you to think about what He's done in the last twelve months and be very specific; in the last three months. Maybe you just need to kind of look back into the year and see how God was with you then; how God's hand was upon you then. I want you to reflect upon that in order to give you confidence that in the days ahead God will be with you; that He will not leave you. He will not desert you. He will always be there for you.

I encourage you to just stick around with God. Hang out with Him today. The 23rd Psalm says this, "That is the restorer of my soul. He is the one who does that. He is the Jehovah Raphah, the Lord who is my healer.