Who wants to be stuck in the past, always talking about what God did and how He used to work among us?
While most would say “not me,” unfortunately, many do. They just won’t embrace a fresh work of God’s Spirit. Everything, it seems, must be rooted, connected, and enslaved to a period in the past! You’re somehow a threat to the sacred status quo if you don’t conform to their narrow version of how God operates. The Body of Christ all of a sudden becomes so small.
When you talk to them, all you hear is what God did “back then,” how He moved in wonderful ways “back then,” and how if God is going to do something new, it will be like “back then.”
The problem with those stuck in the past is that God is doing something right now. Their refusal to see it stifles many who look to them for leadership.
If we know anything, we know this: Jesus is moving “right now”!
I suggest we change the language from “back then” to “right now.”
If you want to pursue God’s will for your life, you must press through those who want you to stay stuck in the past with them!
We love the past. It’s foundational to our own spiritual lives. Yes!
We live in the future! God is alive and moving in fresh ways to reach a fresh generation.
Pastor Chuck Smith was so on point when he taught us, “There are so many people that come along, and they like to talk about the good old days. I can remember when. And of some great spiritual experience, some highlight in their spiritual walk in some time past. I’m not really at all interested in the good old days, I’m interested in the now and my present relationship with the Lord. And if it isn’t deeper, richer, fuller, then I am retrogressing rather than progressing! Retrogression is always a dangerous thing in your spiritual walk in life.”
He taught us to move onward and upward toward new, fresh experiences with the Lord! It’s so exciting to live as we were taught!
Get out of your rut and start stepping out in faith for the new things God is doing and will do! Don’t allow others, even those ‘who seem to be something (Gal 2:6)’, to hold you back from God’s best for your life.
Isaiah 43:19 (NKJV) “Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness And rivers in the desert.”
