The Lord spoke to me this morning about the fact that I needed to leave the past behind.  It was something I’ve always known I should do, but, obviously, I was missing something important.

As I was thinking about the past, I realized that I always seemed to wind up saying things like:

“I won’t make that mistake again”

“I won’t trust THEM again…” or even

“I need to remember how I did this the last time, because it really worked well”

I was marking down events in my past as “things I need to remember”.  It suddenly hit me that this wasn’t exactly leaving the past behind.  …I know, I’m slow.

But then, I was left with the obvious question.  If you don’t learn from the past by making these mental decisions, how do we learn?  How do we ever get it right?

The Lord spoke to me about how He isn’t interested in me making mental lists of “do’s and don’t's”.  That was only modifying my behavior.  I was supposed to be letting the Holy Spirit write truths deep inside my heart.

Every event in our lives, good or bad, is an opportunity to have our hearts changed by the Holy Spirit.  He shares truths about who we are in Jesus, truths about our authority, truths about the battles we fight, and truths about being part of the Body of Christ.    But mostly, He reveals to us the truths about the nature of the Lord… about His kindness, His goodness, and His heart for us.

When the Holy Spirit speaks to our hearts, we are changed.  We don’t need the list of do’s and don’t's any more because our renewed hearts will lead us in the way we should go.

We really can leave the past behind and move forward into all that He has called us to.  The Lord is SO FAITHFUL! 

“being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 1:6