Your tomorrow is greater than your yesterday. And today is a new day! Be present. Be here, now. The past got us here. We survived. God is good, He is faithful, and He walked us out of the valley of the shadow of death. Now what?
I can’t tell you how much time I have wasted trying to change or ‘understand’ my past. Now I get why God encourages us to put the past behind us and be present in the moment. And He promises that our future will be so much better!
Philippians 3:12-14 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
It comes dow to trust for me. Either I trust God and believe what He says or I don’t. I wish I could say I was perfect, but I am not. I question God all the time.
- Did you really say that?
- You want me to do what?
- You want me to go where?
- Really, I have to pray for her?
And the list goes on. I sure am glad that God’s patience is bigger than my list of questions. And that His mercy is new every morning. Yet He calls us to trust Him, and follow Him. Day by day. I like how Brennan Manning puts it:
The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.
Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin’s Path to God
So I sit here quietly, and listen. Show me Lord what this day is about. Walk with me and direct my feet. Today Lord, I lay down my list and follow your voice.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
