Moving On

If one has lived more than a decade, one has suffered through some difficult times. With age comes experience and with experience comes wisdom. If you are like me, sometimes I wish I had had fewer opportunities to become wiser.

Perhaps your difficult time took shape as the loss of a valued friend; the death of a loved one; having to move to a new home far from where you had taken root. Perhaps someone whom you trusted and from whom you expected a certain behavior failed you and deeply wounded your spirit. If you have logged any mileage on this road we call life, you have suffered disappointments and have been a disappointment to others.

These experiences can and should have an impact on our lives. Occasionally things have happened in my life that caused me to think of a line from Chris Farley in the movie Tommy Boy – “Wow, that’s going to leave a mark.” Some experiences are so positive or so negative that they leave a mark. A big one for me happened my senior year of high school. Like many in high school, I had a high school sweetheart. We dated on and off for several years. I think it is no exaggeration to say that we were crazy about each other. But, we were young and the relationship was rocky and we broke up and went back together with some regularity. In the spring of our senior year we were during one of our “break up” modes. Or at least I thought we were. That is until I received the phone call and learned that she had run off to Tennessee and gotten married. That one left a mark. Ouch.

The question becomes; how do we process these experiences in ways that are helpful instead of harmful? How do we learn from our experiences without allowing them to limit our future or cause us to have a cynical view of life? Such experiences can tend to toughen our approach to life or they can just inform our approach to live. They can harden us or soften us. Such experiences can drive toward God or drive us away from God. Though we rarely understand it as such, it is a choice we make. Our life experiences, in and of themselves, has neither a positive or negative impact on our lives. What impact they have is a choice we make.

On the negative side, we can allow our lives to be limited by our past experiences. Such experiences may cause us to live in the fear of suffering from a reoccurrence. We don’t fully give our whole hearts in a relationship for fear of being hurt. We don’t take on new challenges for fear of falling and hurting ourselves or fear of looking foolish in front of others. We don’t trust anyone because someone failed to keep a trust in our past. We don’t speak up because we fear we will be belittled as we were in the past.

You possibly noticed a reoccurring pattern to this negative approach – Fear. Our past experiences can cause us to fear the future. Living in fear is not a Godly way of life. The most often repeated command from God is, “Fear not.” A God-filled, God-led life is a fearless life. One cannot possibly go where God is leading and one cannot possibly do what God is calling one to do if one is fearful.

There is an interested take on this subject in the New Testament. “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12-14)

Here is what the author is saying to me. Keep your eyes on the goal. Keep moving ahead. Sure, learn from your past experiences, but don’t let them control you. Don’t let your past dictate your future. None of us have arrived. We are all still on the spiritual journey toward maturity. What has happened in your past, God can use for the good in your future. When you encounter a difficult time (or person or situation) don’t stop there. Keep moving. Keep your eyes on the goal. You’re not there yet.

So, if you are more than ten years old, you have had a disappointment or two in life. Perhaps it happened in and through the church. What did you expect? The church is populated by people – people much like you and me. But don’t let that stop you from moving into the future God has for you. Put the past in the past and move into the future. We need to do that as individuals and as a church.

God is already in our future. I am excited to join Him there. Let’s go!

Copyright © 2013, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved