DAY 30 - LORD, LIFT ME OUT OF MY PAST.
Imagine that you are running a race, and you're trying to reach the goal and the ultimately win the prize. But as hard as you try you can never get to the finish line because there is a heavy weight tied around one of your legs. You struggle to pull it along, but it slows you down and causes you to be so weary and exhausted that you are tempted to give up altogether. It doesn't occur to you that this is something you don't have to carry. It has been so much a part of you for so long that you never imagined life without it. Yet you can't finish the race and secure the prize God has for you until you become free of it.
This scenario is true for so many of us. We are trying to run the race of life, but we are having trouble getting up to speed. That's because we've been carrying excess baggage from the past around with us without even realising it. In fact we've carried it around with us for so long we think it's part of us.
God wants to take that burden from you so you will never have to carry it again. Whether it's something that happened as long ago as your early childhood or as recently as yesterday, the past can keep you from moving into all God has for you.
Once you step out of the past its important you don't keep looking over your shoulder to see if it's following you. That's what Lot's wife did and it paralysed her. It will paralyze you too. And it will definitely slow you down in the race.
I guarantee that no matter how old you are, God has something new He wants to do in your life. Ask Him to show you what that is. Tell Him you intend to stand in the race and you don't want to carry any baggage from the past around with you. Tell Him you want to run in such a way would that you will obtain the prize. (I Corinthians 9:24).
PRAYER
Lord, I pray that You would set me free from my past. Wherever I have made the past my home in prayer that You would deliver me, heal me, and redeem me from it. I choose to make my home with Your. Help me to let go of anything I have held onto of my past that has kept me from moving into all You have for me. Enable me to put off all former ways of thinking and feeling and remembering (Ephesians 4:22-24). Give me the mind if Christ so I will be a new to understand when I am being controlled by memories of past events.
I don't want to tie myself to the past by neglecting to forgive any person or event associated with it. Help me to forgive what needs to be forgiven. Specifically, I pray that You would deliver me from the effects of (name any painful or bad memory you have). I release my past to You and everyone associated with it so You can restore what had been lost. Everything that was done to me or I have done which causes me pain, I surrender to You. May it no longer torment me or affect what I do today. Make me glad according to the days in which I have been affected and the years I have seen evil (Psalm 90:15). Thank You that You make all things new and You are making me new in every way (Revelation 21:5).
Help me to keep my eyes looking straight ahead and not back on the former days and old ways of doing things. I know You want to do something new in my life today. Help me to concentrate on where I am to go now and not where I have been. Release me from the past so I can move out of it and into the future You have for me.
Scripture for Meditation
II Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Isaiah 43:18-19
“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
Philippians 3:13-14
Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But 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 upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Proverbs 4:25-27
Let your eyes look directly forward,
and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet;
then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left;
turn your foot away from evil.
Revelation 21:4
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
#inspired...ann #WiseQuotes
*Stomie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Woman(2006)
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