Press On

One of the hardest things to do as a Christian is to forget the mistakes we made in the past.  I don’t know if it is even possible to forget.  Those are things that just sometimes stick with us through life.  We may go a long time without remembering the shame, guilt, and embarrassment of those past sins, but then all of a sudden something rekindles that memory.  Sometimes we even forget the good memories of this life, the things we want to remember, but those awful mistakes seem to linger with us.

We may not be able to forget some of the bad things we have done in the past, but we need to know that we have been forgiven.  God says in Psalm 103:12 that He removes our transgressions “as far as the east is from the west”.  The apostle Paul did some horrible things before he submitted his life to Christ.  He was involved in the persecution and killing of Christians.  This must have been something that stuck with Paul, but in Philippians 3:13-14 Paul tells us that he put the things in the past behind him and he pressed on to the things that were before him.  We may not be able to forget some of the mistakes we have made in the past, but we cannot allow these things to bring us down or hold us back.  There is nothing we can do about the past, but we can certainly have an impact on the present and the future.

“Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:13-14)

About these ads