The worries of our past can be powerful. Maybe we have done some egregious wrong in our past, maybe a hidden sin issue, maybe a drug dependency. Maybe someone has done us considerable wrong in our past. Maybe a sexual offense that results in shame or feelings of not being worthy. Maybe we just woke up one day and found ten years have got behind us and we grieve the loss of time. Failed relationships, abusive relationships, no relationships. Whatever the cause the past can still be brutal to us in the present and prevent us from even considering a future. That is what the enemy desires. To have so wrapped up in our past that we cannot live for Christ in the present nor even consider the future He already has laid out for us. This however, is the promise for those who are in Christ:
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2Corinthians 5: 16-17
We are a new creation beloved. The old is gone! That haunting from your past is gone! That fear, shame, reproach is gone! Yet so many Christians still hold onto it. They cling to it. They can go up to the altar week after week and beg God to take it from them, only to walk back to their pew with it firmly in their hands and around their neck. It is not a more comfortable yoke. It is not an easier yoke. But it is a familiar yoke. We must get beyond the familiarity of the pain of our past and embrace the new creation in Christ we have become.
Satan also ensnares us with worrying about our present situations. In the world we now live in there is plenty to worry about. Disease, famine, war, the economy the list goes on and on. Media only focuses on the negative, playing up the basest examples of humanity for us to see every night on our local news. Politics are now but a means to divide one person against another. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It seems there is no escape from it, no peace within it but God:
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33
But do we take heart? The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives within us but do we walk under that power and peace or do we reflect to our present circumstances? Are we excessively worried about the day to day minutia in this world? Jesus taught about worry:
Then Jesus said to his disciples: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Luke 12: 22-25
Here is the key. Worrying has no positive effect on your life. In the words of Jesus, it cannot add a single hour to your life. But the sad thing is that it certainly can take away an hour from your life. Have you ever spent time worrying about something? That is time you never get back and the outcome was not affected by your worrying. That was the point Christ was trying to make. God is in control. If we are not in control and worrying cannot fix anything why worry? But if we know God is in control, then the direction becomes clearer:
