No Future in the Past

Have you ever thought about the many songs dedicated to yesterday and the past? The first that came to mind is the Beatles’s classic “Yesterday.” There’s also:

Yesterday Once More

Only Yesterday

More Today Than Yesterday

Yesterday When I Was Young

Holdin’ On To Yesterday

It’s Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday

Yesterday’s Rain

Yesterday I Had the Blues

I Wish It Was Yesterday

Then there’s the classic Jethro Tull song “Living in the Past.” There’s also:

Searching for the Past

Something in the Past

No Future in the Past

Something in the Past

The Day is Past and Gone

Tainted Past

Ghosts of the Past

My Past is Present

Your Redneck Past

And the list goes on and on….

Here at Amazing Grace Radio, we try to avoid songs that keep us in the past, though we might be adding “Your Redneck Past.” (Just joking)

One of the devils best weapons is to keep us living in the past and remembering painful seasons in our life. Dwelling on past pain can be almost paralyzing at times and keeps us from looking forward. There is nothing we can do to change what has already occurred. But we can learn from it and move on. We can never bear fruit unless we prune away the past. How can you say goodbye to yesterday? Focus on Christ today and always.

In Henri Nouwen’s book, ‘Turn My Mourning into Dancing”, he writes,

“As long as we remain resentful about things we wish had not happened, about relationships that we wish had turned out differently, mistakes we wish we had not made, part of our heart remains isolated, unable to bear fruit in the life ahead of us. It is a way we hold part of ourselves apart from God.”

A great example of not looking back, always moving forward and keeping the focus on Christ is Paul. Talk about a dark past. But Paul always stayed on course:

12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:12-14

When Christ said, “Follow Me”, he wasn’t talking about traveling back, but forward. He is the way today, tomorrow, always.