This last Sunday, Pastor Herk of Little Church in the Pines continued in the sermon series about refocusing ourselves. He pointed out that we have temptations about making our own plans for the future and go to great lengths to put together a path to our goals that are perfect to us. We are so focused on having it all figured out, that we missed the best that God can give us in our planning, because we are in His way. The Bible is full of examples of people who trusted God every step of the way. If you are thinking the right thoughts and your eyes are fixed in the right place, then your future can be bright. The real question for all of us is “Will we learn to get out of His way and let Him lead us to our future?
We need to and want to focus on God’s future for our lives, but we have to leave our past behind in order to do it. We work so hard to vision and plan a map and blueprint of what, where and how we want to go, then we present it to God saying, “Here you go! Please bless it”, instead of asking God, to help us develop the plan for our future. One of the biggest ways to mess things up is to plan our future based on our past. That’s not to say that we should be learning for experiences in our past or that we shouldn’t try to repeat successful things from the past as we move into the future, but we do not want some of the fears that we developed from our past steer us away from things that God wants and is leading us to for our future.
We can focus on the wrong things and the negative things going on around us in this fallen world. We can focus on the evil, the temptations, the distractions and the wrongs in the world that we forget about the important and good godly things going on around us that we need to focus on. Because of recent events, some people have a total hopeless feeling about the future of this country and the world, thinking that God is really not in control of what is going on around us. He may allow us to suffer a bit, but He is in control of all things. We need God’s presence and guidance as this country and world desperately needs revival. The solution to this nation’s problems is not politics, social or economic issues, but Jesus Christ and that is where our focus needs to be in the chaos and confusion.
Sometimes, we need to let go of our past failures in order to go into the future. Because of the scars of the past, we get weighed down in our walk. We cannot be pulling a little red wagon full of our problems behind us in order to get from here to there. We cannot change the past, but every step forward should be with God helping and leading us. When we see what God wants us to learn from our past problem situations, when He could lead us through and out of those situations and move forward. Be willing and let go of you fear and put your focus on God and walk with Him into our future. Get out of His way and trust Him. God is love and can be trusted with our future. He is always there for us.
We must be above doubt. It may be scary to trust God for our future, because we do not know what the future holds in store for us. But, we need to trust and walk through wherever the Lord is taking us and be obedient to His leading. There are a lot of unknowns out in the world, and that is why we tend to move back to a position of comfort. But, our past comforts may have the potential to hold us back from the very best future tht we can walk into. Life is a risky business this side of eternity. Even without holding onto our past, we have the temptation to push the pause button when God is leading us into our future.
Let's continue Pastor Herk's message on focusing on our future in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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