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How Does God View Our Past? (part 1)

Many of us taking on the journey of Christian faith are confronted with ghosts. Not horror-movie ghosts, but ghosts of our past. They follow us, filling us up with shame and regret. Sometimes, these ghosts cause us to forget the plans our loving God has for us now. We can become convinced that our pasts are too broken for God to really love us.

So how does God really view our past?

Don’t be fooled. Our sins have consequences, and our pasts do leave scars on our present selves. Yet we can take comfort in the fact that, as believers, our past sins are covered by the forgiveness we find in Jesus. Jesus’ death and resurrection free us from being broken fragments and puts us back together to be whole. The Bible says that God views those who follow him through the “lens” of Jesus, so-to-speak. Jesus’ blood covers us and makes us new before God. That is grace… and grace is incredibly powerful.

So yes, we do have to deal with the consequences of our sins, never forgetting the fact that we need God’s redemption. However, we are also free now to live in the present. Faithful to God. Under his will. It is our relationship with God now that defines us. The apostle Paul writes in Philippians 3:12-14 (NLT): “I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection... No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.”

Like Paul, our eyes should be on the prize. Our past is forgiven, so we should allow our wounded places to be healed by that forgiveness. Freedom is ours. Let’s race ahead freed from the weight of those haunting little ghosts back there behind us.