Abounding Grace

Pastor Ed Taylor: What do I do with my past? That's the question before us today on Abounding Grace. Our past follows us, taunts us, pulls on us, and even condemns us. Everyone has a past. Yours may not be as bad as mine, but I'm certain that every one of us listening in have something that you wish you could wipe clean and you wish wasn't a part of your testimony to make it disappear or erase it permanently.

But that's where Romans chapter 8 verse 1 comes into our lives because no matter what comes to mind, there is therefore now no condemnation to those that are in Christ, your past included. There is no condemnation for your past.

Guest (Male): Living with the reality of a past, the question remains, and it's a good biblical question: What do I do with my past?

Maybe you look back on your past with deep regret and feel like it's really holding you back. Is there anything that can be done about it? Keep listening and find out what to do with your past today on Abounding Grace with Pastor Ed Taylor. We're continuing a series titled Free from our Past. You're about to hear three very practical things you can do with your past when it's remembered or even brought against you in some way.

Pastor Ed Taylor: Take your Bibles open them to the book of Romans, chapter 8, in a Bible study that I've entitled, What Do I Do with My Past? We've learned already, and what a relief it is to know, that we are not condemned in Jesus Christ. Just like being in this building, there are benefits to being in this building. As we learned before, it's a very easy thing to think through. We are either in this building or we're not in this building.

As we process that, we recognize that today we can also say we are either in Christ or we're not in Christ. That born-again believer is in Christ, and there are many benefits to being in Christ. Some of you asked for or emailed me the various truths that are in the scripture about being in Christ. Here are just a few of them on that list.

According to Romans chapter 3, we've been justified freely in Christ. In Romans chapter 6 verse 11, we are now dead to sin. This is a very powerful truth because now we have residing in us the power to live apart from sin. Whereas before we were born again, all we did was sin. We were dead. The Bible says we were dead in our trespasses and sins. But now in Christ, we are now dead to sin, no longer dead in sin. That's powerful.

In Romans chapter 6 verse 23, we have eternal life in Christ. In Romans chapter 8 verse 39, we will never be separated from God's love in Christ. In Romans chapter 12 verse 5, I'm now a part of a new family, a new body of believers. Literally, you can go anywhere around the world, meet another believer, and immediately be connected on a deeper level than ever before.

Why? Because you're in Christ, they're in Christ, and now you're connected spiritually. Even if you don't speak their language or understand their culture, in Christ we are together in unity with every believer around the world. Romans chapter 15 verse 8, we now have a new hope in Christ. Romans chapter 15 verse 17, we have reason to glory now in Christ.

Literally, we have a reason to live. The purpose of God is revealed to us in Christ. 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 2, we are set apart, and God is literally changing our lives even now in Christ. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17, we're a new creation in Christ. Old things have passed away, and the list goes on and on and on.

In Christ, our sins have been forgiven. They've been judged: past, present, and future. Like Isaiah says in Isaiah 44, we realize this in Christ, that I have blotted out like a thick cloud your transgressions and like a cloud your sins. David says in Psalm 103 verse 10 that He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him.

Now in Romans chapter 8 verse 1, another glorious truth as we learn once again, there is therefore now—and you have this circled, right?—now, in this moment. Every time you read this, every time you meditate on it, every time you think it, now in this moment. If you think it in a second, it's that moment. And another second, it's every time I repeat it. There is now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

Now, some of you in the New King James, you'll notice a little asterisk there because in different sets of manuscripts, this phrase is there and in some manuscripts, it's not. But I believe it's a very powerful truth for the manuscripts that it is included in because you truly experience this truth when you're walking in the spirit. It's true when you're not walking in the spirit. There is no condemnation from God.

But when we're not in the spirit and in the flesh, what do we do? We heap loads of condemnation upon ourselves and we beat ourselves up. We often don't need anyone else to do it to us. We're often our own worst critic and our own worst condemner. But even if we are able to walk strong, there's always the enemy of our souls accusing and trying to condemn us and throw a charge against us. But in Christ, there's freedom and safety.

And yet, for many listening, there's this constant shadow in my life and your life and mine. It definitely is in my life, and that is my past. I'm not proud of my past. We can often get a laugh out of it, we can often get an applause that we're not in our past anymore and that we're born again, but I'm not proud of my past. I don't like it.

If I had the choice, there's always that philosophical theoretical question: If you could do anything to change your past, would you do it? Of course, the answer is yeah. I would want to avoid a lot of the sinful pain. I would not want to hurt people like I did. I can go on and on and list. But then the answer is, at the same time, I am who I am today as a culmination of my past.

So if it meant changing my past and not being where I am today, then no. The answer is it's a trick question. The real answer is I just accept my life as from the Lord. I wish a big section of it wasn't there. Part of my past involving drugs and alcohol has really messed with my memory, so in one side of that is I don't remember a lot of my past.

But I also have a lot of friends and a lot of people that sometimes remind me of my past. They don't do it on purpose, they just do it because, "Hey, do you remember this story? Remember that story?" And I'm like, "No man, I don't remember it and I actually don't want to hear it." Well, let me tell you, and then we can hear the story and we can go, "Man, it really is a testimony that God has done a work." And there's no question whatsoever in my life that God has done a work in my life.

I don't know what your past is. Some of you don't have that more difficult of a past, and I just want you to rejoice that you don't have the kind of past that maybe I have. I want you to be really happy about that. Sometimes those that were raised in a godly home, or even those that weren't raised in a godly home but because of the circumstances of their family really chose a moral path in their life.

They really chose to do the right thing until they came to Christ. Then they were born again and they're like, "Yeah, it was all worth it." Or you were born in a Christian home and people start sharing testimonies because most of our church, we come from really bad backgrounds. So you hear a testimony and you look at your own life and you go, "If I was asked to share a testimony, I don't really have much of one."

That is not true. You have a great testimony that along the way with all the temptations that came your way, you were able in the strength of the Lord, or even in the resolve of your decision to do the right thing, said no to a lot of bad temptations along the way. Your temptation is that you weren't delivered through trial or difficulties or sin, you were actually delivered from it and you didn't have to go through it.

So either way, wherever your past is, we're all touched by sin. We all have difficulties. If it's a bad situation where there was no hope for you, or it was a very good situation where you were raised in a godly home, one of the areas that the enemy will use in your life is to use your past against you. Use the way your dad treated you, use the way your mom spoke to you, use the attitude that you had, how you spoke and treated people. Our past has a way of following us.

I remember the first time my past and my criminal record was used in the mistakes that I made under the influence. I didn't get a job because of my past. They had run my background and I had put down I was, and I remember telling the man, "I am a born-again Christian, I do not live that way anymore." And he says, "Well, we don't hire thieves here," and that was it.

He didn't even give me a chance to say I haven't taken anything, I could have taken your watch but I left it there. No, I didn't do that. We can get a little bit of a laugh over it, but it was devastating to me. It was devastating to me because even if I glory and rejoice in the new work of Jesus Christ, and He is very quick to forgive us, our world is not so quick to forgive or forget.

We need to learn how to navigate as a believer in a world, even if it's the world of our own mind, that our past follows us, taunts us, pulls on us, and even condemns us. And everyone has a past. Yours may not be as bad as mine, but I'm certain that every one of us listening in have something that you wish you could wipe clean and you wish wasn't a part of your testimony to make it disappear or erase it permanently.

But that's where Romans chapter 8 verse 1 comes into our lives because no matter what comes to mind, there is therefore now no condemnation to those that are in Christ, your past included. There is no condemnation for your past. However, living with the reality of a past, the question remains, and it's a good biblical question: What do I do with my past?

I have three things I want to share with you today of what you can practically do with your past when it comes up, when it's remembered, and perhaps even when it's used against you. What do I do with my past? The first one, number one, is you forget your past. You forget your past. Turn over to Philippians chapter 3, a passage we've been meditating on as a church this year.

Philippians chapter 3, draw your attention to verse 12. What do we do with our past? We forget it. Philippians 3:12 says, "Not that I've 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 that are ahead, I press toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."

Forgetting those things that are behind, I press forward. Now, I know that this sounds too simplistic, but it only is simplistic if you approach it that way where you look and go, "I don't think I can forget my past." Well, in forgetting your past, this is not the idea of erasing a mental memory. It is a conscious choice to move forward.

We forget the past by releasing the past and reaching forward for the future. Did you hear that? We forget the past by releasing the past and reaching forward for the future. Because you know you can't reach forward if you're still hanging on to the past. You're not going to make progress if you choose to always hold on to the past. Paul says I forget those things in the past and I press on and I press toward the goal.

Next to it in Philippians chapter 3, if you're still there, right next to pressing on, running swiftly. The idea is moving fast and going after it. That's what Paul did. He ran swiftly away from his past and swiftly toward the goal of Jesus Christ. You have to forget the past. But you say, "Ed, I can't. I can't do what you're asking." But I say to you, in Christ, you can.

Even as I share a little bit of my own testimony, I share it not as an anchor of my life, but of the reality of where God has delivered me. My past has a perspective now. I'm not proud of it, nor do I choose to dwell in it. But I'll tell you this: If God can use the delivering power that He's demonstrated in my life in comparison to my past, then I will continue to share it for the sake of deliverance in other people's lives.

Because I can't help but think that someone listening in here is in great bondage. And what happens in great bondage is you just don't believe you'll be delivered. You can't see the possibility. You don't even have a concept of how life could be different. And then a guy comes along and says, "You know what?" This happened with me, I remember distinctly. I can remember it as clear as possible listening to the radio first and then on cassette tapes, the testimony of Pastor Raul Ries.

I can hear it in his voice, I can remember where I was sitting, and I can remember the freedom that was being spoken into my life through the Word of God through a man who was worse than me, who was going farther than I was, that his testimony was where I was headed had God not intervened. As I'm listening, I'm like, "Man, if God can do that to this guy, then maybe"—I didn't fully believe it, but it put me on the path of—"maybe He can do that in my life." And He just began to speak hope.

The worst counselor in your life is actually not a friend and it's not that person that might even be giving you bad advice. The worst counselor in your life tends to be you. Do you know you talk to yourself more than anyone? That's not a weird thing. We all have voices and we all reason with ourselves. We all think through things. We have discussions with ourselves that is in no way unhealthy.

The only problem is that when we get to that mode, we then have a choice either to counsel ourselves with the Word of God and the truths of God or our own understanding. And certainly, we know that we make great mistakes when we begin to talk to ourselves not having the Word of God open or the Word of God speaking to us. You have to forget the past.

I found the only times I can forget my past is in the moments that I choose to dwell on my future. I can't think about two things at the same time. When I'm meditating on the scriptures day and night like Joshua was told, I find myself enraptured in the potential that God wants to do in my life, how He wants to continue to grow me. If I look at some of the circumstances that are in my life currently, that my past could be yesterday or last week or five and a half years ago, if I choose to dwell in those moments, then I'll tell you, I am sunk.

Ever been there? Depression, discouragement, sorrow, feeling sorry for myself, pity are always a decision away. And they're not from the Lord. They come from a weight of condemnation and not accepting and enjoying God's will for my life and glorying in who He is, not just what I have or what I don't have. When I choose to play it over and over again in my mind, it'll bury me.

If it was an argument, you think of all the things that you should have said or would have said, but you can't say those things because it's done. When you're in the midst of something and you end up ending it on a bad note and then you're driving home and then you're thinking, "Man, I could have said this," and it comes to you way too late. You want to dwell on the things. The reality is that those who choose not to forget tend to stay in one place their whole lives.

That place of hurt or failure. That's just where they're stuck. You talk to them, that's what they talk about. For instance, you know a person that's really bitter. You can sense a bitterness in someone that when you come to them, they're immediately going to take you to another place. They're immediately going to take you to, "Well, did you hear about what he did to me?" Well, now they're taking you right here with them, but they're taking you to another time and another place.

And you're like, "Well, did it happen right now, bro? Because I'm standing right here in front of you. Did it happen?" "No, no, it happened, it probably did it to you too." You need to move on. The Bible says in Colossians that we need to forgive one another. That's the releasing. You want to be released from your bitterness? Forgive. And forgive. And forgive.

But when you choose not to forgive, you become stuck at that hurt or that pain or that failure. And the reality is that those who choose not to forget are pretty obvious. They stay in one place their entire lives, pitifully unwilling to move forward. They have a tendency to whine and complain and be miserable, tainting every new and old relationship that they have. Just like the Bible says, the root of bitterness defiles many.

It's common in the body of Christ, when we are in Christ and there's no condemnation for us or for others. There are even people in their lives who have forgotten and choose to move beyond it, but the trap of the enemy has been set and it's always there to take you back. Listen, I know that I'm speaking to some of you right now and you're wrestling with me, you're battling this concept, this truth of forgetting and moving forward.

You're arguing with me and you might even be saying, "Ed, you just don't understand. I mean, if you would be in my shoes for a week, if you would live my life for a month, you would understand." Well, I have to admit to you that I don't understand fully the pain, the problem, the testimony, the thoughts, the hounding. I don't understand. So there's no need to argue with me over that.

I don't understand every problem in everyone's life. And that's really good news, that your freedom and mine doesn't depend on our understanding. I think I have a deeper empathy in these days with the pains and problems of people, but even my empathy will only help you get to Jesus Christ. See, it's not whether I understand or not. Because if I understood the way you understand, I'd probably hurt the way you hurt.

I'd probably face the same temptations you're facing. That's where understanding would be. Sitting in your seat, I'd probably hurt as bad or similar to the hurt you're feeling. I'd probably be tempted with the same temptations you're tempted with. And the answer for you and the answer for me is the same. Jesus Christ has come to forgive us of all of our sins so that we can then forgive others and be free and live a life that honors and pleases Him. It's okay if you argue with me, but it's a waste of time. Often in Bible study, when a truth starts to get close, we get defensive.