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PAGE TITLE: CBN Daily Devotional
ARTICLE TITLE: Getting On With Your
Life
AUTHOR: Bruce Swaffield
AUTHOR
INFORMATION: Bruce
Swaffield is a professor in the Regent University School of Journalism in the
the College of Communication.
DATE: N.A
Daily Devotional
Getting On With Your Life
By
Dr. Bruce C. Swaffield
Professor, Regent University
CBN.com – Our lives are filled with good and bad memories. The
impressions of the past live in our minds, and we can look at them over and
over again. The scenes we recall are like snapshots, forever stopped in time.
Still, they evoke strong feelings that have the power to influence our
thinking. Ironically, most of these lifeless pictures determine who and what we
are right now although they captured moments many years and places ago. Our
present attitude, as well as our behavior, depends on which events we choose to
relive.
Our
human nature is to dwell on the negative – what we regret or what injured us.
Our divine nature, on the other hand, looks forward to and focuses on what lies
ahead in the kingdom. We can easily become obsessed by the former and forget
about the latter, even though we know heaven should come first. That is
precisely why we have so much trouble “getting on with our life” once we have
been offended or wounded. We look so long at reflections that make us unhappy
we cannot see what is there to make us happy.
“I
can’t do it,” you might be thinking. “There is too much for me to forget and
too much for me to forgive. The pain and the anger won’t go away. I am still
suffering. It’s impossible for me to get over what happened.” For the most
part, you are right. You can’t get over the past. You can’t put it behind, at
least not on your own. But Jesus can. He can make you forget and forgive. He
can give you the strength to move on without the hurt and the anxiety. He can
heal the wounds completely if you let him.
It
is time for us to get rid of what prevents us from being ourselves: the
wonderful child that God created, not the person the world has molded. Take all
of the many pictures of your life that you hold in your mind. Put them all
together on the table in front of you. Look at each one carefully, and then
choose the ones you want to keep and the ones you want to forget. Throw away
the images not worth keeping and showing to others. What value or purpose can
there be in sharing situations that remind us who we were long ago? We are not
that person anymore. We have changed.
“Forget
the former things,” the Lord told Isaiah. “Do not dwell on the past. See, I am
doing a new thing!” You, my friend, are that “new thing!” If those around you
do not recognize you today it is because they do not realize who you are now;
they are seeing the old thing of years ago. They perceive only what they saw
then, nothing more and nothing less. What do you think would happen, for
example, if you suddenly went back to the same people who hurt you? Would they
welcome you back? Probably not. They cannot forget the past because they are
living in it. Why, then, would you want to keep looking at dark memories of
what is done and over?
You
and I are made for today, not yesterday. Our future depends on the present, and
nothing is more important than what we do right now. This moment is the perfect
time to start moving forward again and stop letting guilt stop us. “He whom the
Son sets free, is free indeed.” There is no reason for anything (or anyone) to
hold us back. No person on earth can keep us captive because we have been
released from bondage. Get rid of those old pictures of you being beaten and
bruised. The only one you need to keep is that of Jesus on the cross.
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