Walking Out of Your Past and Into Your Future

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The good news of Jesus Christ is so wonderful that it’s often hard for us to believe. The truth about what God has done for us is so good we sometimes doubt it could possibly be true. It’s that good! Yet, it is true.

God created you to be his Beloved, to be his Bride. You are so very precious to him. That’s who you were created to be and that’s how he sees you. If you have been born again by the power of the Holy Spirit, that’s who you are.

If you deal with feelings of worthlessness or if you doubt God’s love for you, I encourage you to spend some time in the book of Ephesians. In Ephesians, Paul tells the story of God’s great plan of redemption for us, his children.

Paul tells us that God’s desire is that we stand before Him holy and blameless in love, without shame or guilt. That’s how he created you to live.

It was God’s good pleasure to make you a new person in Christ. He is so glad his plan to redeem you from sin has come full circle, that you believed and trusted Him and have now become his adopted child. He has started the process of making you into the person you were originally designed to be before sin took its toll on your life.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

When you were born again, you didn’t just become a new person, you became a new kind of person. Your old self was natural, of the flesh. Your new person is spiritual. Your spirit was regenerated and the person you were created to be from the beginning of the world was finally released on this earth. Unfortunately, that new person lives inside the same body as the old person! From the day we are born again until the day we see Jesus, we will be becoming that person in greater and greater measure. We are being changed from glory to glory, into the image of Christ. Then, when we see Him, we will finally become who we were destined to become all along. You are in a progress. You are growing. You are changing. Please have patience with yourself and with the process.

You may ask what happened to that old person. That person is dead. Romans 8 says your old man is dead in Christ. And your new man is alive in Christ Jesus. And you are now a completely new person. You are now learning to live as an entirely new kind of person, a child of God.

Theoretically, that old man is dead, but he doesn’t die easily! He lingers on as long as we allow him to! Old habits die hard and we’ve brought a lot of them with us into this new life, and a lot of memories that constantly remind us of our former life and try to define us.

The devil, other people, and even yourself will constantly remind you of your past and what kind of person you were, then try to use that information to define who you are now. But that’s no longer who you are. That’s who you were, but now you are a new person in Christ.

I lived 22 years as the “old man.” The thought patterns, habits, and personality traits of that person were ingrained into my mind and the members of my body, as Paul calls them in Romans 7:23. Now that I’m a new person in Christ, I can change, but it’s not easy or instant. There are things that must be repented of, healed, shifted, and broken. When I was born again immediately my spirit went from spiritually dead to spiritually alive. But I have a mind that must be transformed, reprogrammed, into the mind of Christ. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit because it’s a spiritual work. I can’t do it on my own. And neither can you.

But Jesus is calling us closer and closer to Him. He dwells in the light. He is the light. As we answer his call and draw nearer to him, we are more aware of our “issues.” Those things have to be dealt with. When we become aware of things inside of us, beliefs, attitudes, and desires, that do not line up with Christ they must go. Those things have become a part of our very being. They don’t go away easily. It takes a willingness to die in areas we do not want to die. It’s like taking away a toy from a spoiled child who is determined to have their own way. But it’s much harder when WE are the child, having to deal with our own selfish, irrational selves.

Yet, he keeps calling us out of darkness into His light. And as we come after him he gives us the desire to come closer, no matter the cost. And he takes away the fear that stepping into the light will expose our sin. He’s in the light and we MUST have Him. And He’s good. And if He’s good and he’s calling me closer and he knows my sin before he calls me then he’s not going to condemn me or shame me for coming. He’s going to help me!

Who are you?

God’s message and gift to us are so wonderfully awesome it seems too good to be true. It’s amazing. It really is.

Ephesians says God’s plan was a mystery since the beginning of time, but now God has revealed it to his servants. He had a master plan from the beginning of the world, and we were in it. We were predestined to be His children. He’s planned for us to stand before Him holy and without shame in love. That’s His plan, His desire for us.

No sin can keep us from our Father, unless we let it. Because he has already provided the payment for the sin, before we ever sinned, before we were even born.

John 1:12 – But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

2 Corinthians 5:17 – Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Hebrews 2:11 – Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.

We need to know who we were created to be. That’s why reading God’s Word is so important. In the Bible we not only find out who God is, but who we are.

How do we walk in our new identity?

We must accept these truths, these gifts, this new identity by faith. We must choose by faith to believe these wonderful truths He says about us. It’s not what we think about ourselves, not what we know about ourselves, but what we know to be true because He said it. The only way to walk in it is to grab ahold of this new identity by faith.

I believe this is what Jesus did for me and what God thinks about me. I choose to believe His grace is enough to make me who He created me to be. I believe the blood He shed on the cross is more powerful than all my sin, and wipes my sins away.

The proof of our faith isn’t in what we say, but in what we do. If we believe who God says we are in His Word, we won’t just say it, but we will walk it out in our everyday life. We will become this new creation in the real world.

As we walk with God, we are changed from glory to glory and faith to faith. As we walk by faith our outside lives are transformed to match the new person we’ve become inside.

You are NOT your past. You are who and what God says you are in His Word.

There is an internal and external war going on in the life of every born-again Christian. There is a war over our true identity.

In Revelation 12:10, Satan is called “the accuser of the brethren” “who accuses them day and night before God.”

Satan is constantly accusing us. He loves to bring confusion, doubt, and division to our hearts, minds, and homes.

If we don’t know who we are in Christ the enemy of our souls will convenience us that nothing has changed, that we are the same old person we’ve always been. If he doesn’t succeed in keeping you in a life of sin without God, he will try to keep your mind in the past, constantly telling you that because of your past you can’t move forward.

If we are going to walk free from our past into our future we must learn who we are in Christ, believe it by faith, and walk it out in our real lives, not just our heads.

And if we won’t do this for ourselves, hopefully, we will do it for our children. They need to see the freedom we have in Christ to do the things we were created to do.

Ephesians 2:10 – For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Ephesians 4:1-3 – I, therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

The enemy can say things about you. Other people can say things about you. But ultimately what defines you is what God says about you and whether or not you believe it.

The truth, or lies, you believe is what determines your future.

We belong to God. We are His children. He created us and then, recreated us in Christ Jesus. We are new creatures in Christ, destined to fulfill God’s plan, the plan He put in place before He formed the universe.

I have decided:

I choose to walk out of my past into my future.
I choose to be free from my past sin and healed of its scares.
I will not be defined by my past but by God’s Word.
I am who He says I am.
I will study God’s Word to find out who He is and who I am in Christ.
I believe His Word over my feelings, my memories, my mind, and my past.
I’m walking into the future He has created me for, and I’m bringing my children with me.