Don't Give Up on Your Dream!Sample

LOOK FORWARD, NOT BACK

One key to making your dream a reality is to determine to leave the past behind. No matter what has happened (or what hasn’t happened) in the past, there’s not one thing you can do to change it. You have to get over it and move on. Start from today. You can’t move forward while looking back.

I remember watching a football game when Jake Plummer was the quarterback. That day, Jake threw three interceptions in the first three quarters. Then in the fourth quarter, he threw a game-winning touchdown pass. After that touchdown, the commentator said, “Jake has what all the great quarterbacks have—the ability to forget.”

Isn’t that the truth? Certainly, Jake felt horrible each time he threw an interception, but his failure didn’t stop him from going back onto the field to throw more passes. He would never have thrown the game-winning touchdown pass if he hadn't.

I truly believe one huge key to success in life, and making our dreams a reality, is the ability to leave the disappointments of the past behind and move forward. When I think of leaving the past behind, I also think of the Apostle Paul, who wrote a large portion of the New Testament.

Here was a guy who, early in his life, had facilitated the beating and killing of Christians! But Jesus got hold of Paul (Acts 9), and he became a Christian. When he made his first attempts to preach Christ, all of the Christians feared him, but he kept on.

If anyone had a right to feel bad about his past and quit, it was Paul. Without God’s help, he could have been eaten alive by guilt. Or, at the very least, he could have chosen to stay in the background and never preached the Word. In Philippians 3, he provides some insight into how he overcame his past and kept moving forward with the Lord:

Brethren, I don’t 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 (vv. 13-14).

Paul said he did one thing that helped him press forward in life: he forgot what was behind. We wouldn’t have a substantial part of the New Testament if he hadn't! If he put his past behind, we can too.