Move To Your Future

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. - Ephesians 4:32

I am still in the process of learning HOW to accomplish a lifestyle I have wanted to adopt for many years.  In my life I have moved something like 40 times -- enough times that I don't even want to go through the mental effort to remember or count them all.  My desire every time I've been faced with a move is to moan the fact that I'm not more nomadic; meaning, I would like to have a whole lot less stuff to lug around.  Ideally, I could roll up my tent and be on the road within an hour.  If you saw my house right now you would know what a ridiculous pipe dream this is!  Beyond the physical items occupying the space I call home is a multitude of different things from the past I carry within me too.

I'm reading a book, "How to Get Out of Your Own Way" by Tyrese Gibson.  He has a lot of good lines in it.  The line for today I've adopted is, "You can't win points today for yesterday's game."    Clinging to the past, rehearsing the wrongs that have been done to you or by you, using the past as the excuse for why you're stuck with the life you have are all forms of emotional baggage that has to be moved from one day to the next.  The only thing you gain by moving the negative stuff from yesterday into today is another day like yesterday, which we claim we hated.  So, why do we do it?

The Gospels are full to overflowing with the message of forgiveness.  Forgiveness is the act of putting down the wrongs from yesterday.  Forgiveness is an act of refusal to bring the garbage from yesterday (or last year, or the past lifetime) into today.  We may be counting on God to provide the forgiveness we need.  But like the man at the Pool of Siloam where we can never make it into the water in time to be blessed, we think, "Well God didn't choose to forgive my past today, maybe tomorrow."  But God HAS forgiven us once and for all through the Cross and through that sacrifice has bought us a clean slate for today.  Now, what stands between us and living the life God lovingly wants for us is our own baggage and our own perceptions of ways today is messed up from things that happened.  We will not move forward into ANY different future as long as we are withholding forgiveness from either ourselves or from others.  Paul writes, "Forgive one another."  Forgive yourself!  Lighten your load to move into the person God wants you to be!