APP: The past is ancient history. It’s completed and finished. The past is time that has elapsed in your life that you can never get back again. You can’t change the past, but you can learn from it. Some people allow the past to define them. They want to use past experience to justify the way they are living in the present. Sometimes it becomes a sort of game where they become the victim and they blame others for the way they are today. When we make that choice, it affects our friendships and relationships in negative ways. It also limits the potential of what we can accomplish. Other people run from their past. They have things to keep secret from an earlier time in their life that they don’t want anyone else to know about or deal with. Either way we lose. If we really want to live the way that God designed us to, we need to walk ahead of the past. It means we understand that we can only change our today and tomorrow; however, the past can provide us with valuable lessons and reminders. The only way the past will define us is if we choose to allow it to happen.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
2 CORINTHIANS 5:17 NIV
He [God] has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.
PSALM 103:12 NLT
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 JOHN 1:9 NASB
He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, and He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; many will see and fear and will trust in the LORD.
PSALM 40:2–3 NASB
Look to the LORD and his strength; seek his face always. Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced, you his servants, the descendants of Israel, his chosen ones, the children of Jacob.
1 CHRONICLES 16:11–13 NIV