It's All Past

A few weeks ago, I saw a Facebook post quoting some song lyrics that said, "I am redeemed, I'm not who I used to be".  As I thought about that, I realized that most of the time when we think about someone being redeemed, we think about a person's past in terms of who they were before they met Jesus, but really, our past is any moment before the one we are in right now.

I don't know about you, but I am far from perfect and I make mistakes every day.  There are areas of my life where I disappoint myself.  I have goals and expectations for myself that I have not yet reached.  Yet, in other ways, I have come so far from the person I used to be that I barely recognize the woman in the mirror sometimes.

Many times people say that "Jesus died for our sins - past, present, and future".  That's true, yet some people take that truth as a license to sin instead of a motivation to live free and holy in thanksgiving to a God who would do so much to have us in a relationship with Himself. When you think about your past only as the time in your life before you prayed a prayer of salvation, you forget that what happens in the here and now is also soon to be part of a past which Jesus died to redeem.

Philippians 2:13 says it this way in the New Living Translation: "Dear friends, you always followed my instruction when I was with you.  And now that I am away, it is even more important.  Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear".  In those times when we do fail, we have this promise from 1 John 1:9.  "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Here's what I know.  I will celebrate my 60th birthday this week.  That's a lot of past. There' s a big chunk of time when I was rebelling against God and running as far and as fast as I could from the calling that I knew was on my life.  There are stories of that time that I could tell you that would "curl your hair", but all that is past.  But there are countless other stories of little things that most people wouldn't even consider to be wrong that I know are failures for me and still, God has forgiven those things and put them in my past - even those that may have happened just today.  The only direction we can ever walk is into our future.  I am so thankful that God holds past, present, and future in His hands and that He has plans for me that I cannot even imagine and grace for me as I grow into those plans and purposes.  Every day is a day of redemption for all of us if we continue to pursue God through all the circumstances of our lives.