The past should not be a place where we live, but something from which we learn. We are to forget "those things which are behind" and reach "forward to those things which are ahead," and we're to "press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13,14). God is a redeemer and a restorer. We need to allow Him to be both. He can redeem the past and restore what was lost. He can make up for the bad things that have happened (Psalm 90:15). We must trust Him to do those things. We can never move out of the present into the future of what God has for us if we cling to and live in the past.
Your husband's past not only affects him, it affects your offspring as well. More is passed down to your children and grandchildren than just the colour of your hair and eyes. We can leave a legacy as painful and damaging as the one we experienced ourselves. We can bequeath a heritage of divorce, anger, anxiety,depression and fear, to name a few. Whatever you and your husband can free yourselves from the past, you not only lose some of what God has for your future, but for your children's future as well.
God says we are to cry for deliverance, walk in His ways, proclaim His truth, and then we will find freedom from our past. But sometimes there are levels of freedom to go through. Your husband may think he's gotten free of something and it will rear its head again, leaving him feeling like he's right back where he started. Tell him not to be discouraged by that. If he has been walking with the the Lord, he is probably moving into a deeper level of liberty that God wants to work in his life. Your prayers will surely gird him for the journey to greater freedom.
PRAYER
Lord, I pray that You would enable (husband's name) to let go of his past completely. Deliver him from any hold it has on him. Help him to put off his former conduct and habitual ways of thinking about it and be renewed in his mind (Ephesians 4:22,23). Enlarge his understanding to know that You make all things new (Revelation 21:5). Show him a fresh, Holy Spirit inspired way of relating to negative things that have happened. Give him the mind of Christ so that so that he can clearly discern Your voice from the voices of the past. When he hears those old voices, enable him to rise up and shut them down with the truth of Your Word. Where he has formerly experienced rejection or pain, I pray he will not allow them to colour what he sees and hears now. Pour forgiveness into his heart so that bitterness, resentment, revenge and unforgiveness will have no place there. May he regard the past as only a history lesson and not a guide for his daily life.
Wherever his past has become an unpleasant memory, I pray You would redeem it and bring life out it. Bind up his wounds (Psalm 147:3). Restore his soul (Psalm 23:3). Help him to release the past so that he will not live in it, but learn from it, break out of it, and move into the future You have for him.
SCRIPTURES FOR MEDITATION
Isaiah 43:18,19
Do not remember the former things, Nor consider the things of old. 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.
II Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
Ephesians 4:22-24
That you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 24 and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.
II Corinthians 4:16
Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.
Revelation 21:4
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”
#inspired...ann #WiseQuotes
*Stomie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Wife(2006)
No comments:
Post a Comment