Passion: The Bright Light Of Glory By Louie GiglioSample

You Can Begin Again 

For most of us, there’s not a shortage of dreams for our future; there is a fear that we might not be able to shake our past.  Even with our best intentions of how things are going to be different “this time,” the undercurrent of past habits, relationships and failures drags us back into the patterns of life that have haunted us for so long.


Yet, though your past is real, this is the word of God to you today: You can begin again.  What’s done is done, but today is a new day.  And God’s mercy welcomes each new day, blanketing us with hope for a new start.


When God delivered His people from the bondage of Egypt He led them by fire at night and by a cloud in the daytime.  Both the pillar of fire and the cloud were in front of the people, not behind them.

"By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light..." Exodus 13:21


It’s interesting to note that this passage comes from a book titled Exodus for a reason. God’s people were exiting the past and moving forward into what He had dreamed of and promised for them.


What bondage does God want you to exit today?  What habit, guilt, shame or fear does He want to free you from?  And, what truth are you believing God will lead you into?

The enemy wants you to keep looking back, mesmerized by the past and its hold on your life.  But the truth is this: when Christ gave His life in death on the cross He parted something far more significant than the Red Sea as God did for Israel in Exodus.  When Jesus cried “It Is Finished,” the curse over your life was shattered into oblivion and the veil of the temple in Jerusalem, that majestic curtain separating the people from God’s very presence, was ripped in two.


Because of the finished work of Jesus the price is paid.  Guilt is over.  Shame is powerless.  Condemnation is silenced.  Whatever has been done to us (or by us) has been healed in Jesus’ wounds. Death is dead. And Jesus is alive.


So, it’s not our righteousness or faithfulness or mercy that anchors us today, but the righteousness, faithfulness and mercy of the Jesus who lives in all who trust in Him.  Let His finished work sound the gun on a brand new start.  You can begin again.  Today.

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