“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!”

Isaiah 43:18

You are not your past. You are not the mistakes you’ve made, the sins you’ve committed, the regrets you have. You are not your past. Remind yourself of that and say it again. When Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose again, he did it for you, for me, for your sins and for mine. So that we can have salvation in heaven with him for eternity. If we believe that, then you must also believe that you are a new creation in Christ. We all have a past, but we aren’t our past. We all made mistakes and Paul reminds us that we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).

You are not your future. Your future is not going to change based on the amount of time you think, worry, plan, lay out, or dream about how you think it is going to happen. You are not your future. No matter what you do today, your future is not guaranteed.

The easiest way I can sum up the above is “don’t worry about your past and stop stressing about your future”. There it is. Easy enough, right? I wish. Jesus tells us “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:34 There’s a reason Jesus reminds us of this. When we accepted Jesus Christ as our savior, we became new creations in Christ, we are not our former selves anymore, but a new creation. If we are a new creation, that means our old selves have passed away and God reminds us in Isaiah that we are to “not dwell on our past” and that he is “doing a new thing”- which is from Christ. Do you believe that? Think about who you were before you accepted Jesus in your heart and now think about who you are today. Life significantly changes inwardly when we accept Jesus. We can no longer go about our everyday sins without the Holy Spirit convicting us one way or the other. Why? Because we are a new creation in Christ, which is why we are reminded to not dwell on the past, but also reminded to not worry about tomorrow. We need to focus on where and who we are today.

C.S. Lewis said “Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment ‘as to the Lord’. It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.” (Learning in War-Time, The Weight of Glory) I love that reminder that it is our daily bread we are encouraged to ask for. God didn’t tell us to ask for our future bread, or to make sure there is something for us to feed on in the future, but our daily bread. We are to be living in the present, what we can focus on is here and now, moment to moment. There is a reason Jesus reminds us in Matthew 6:27 “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” We can spend our time worrying about the past or the future, but it’s not going to change what has already happened or what is to come. The only one who can change what is to come is Jesus himself, so we are reminded to seek first the Kingdom of God.

Focusing on the present reminds me of running a marathon. The idea of running 26.2 miles is very scary when you first think about it. You commit to the race and then you receive the training plan. You start to look at the very long, tedious training plan that starts off with as little as 2 miles, but slowly builds to 20+ miles. The worry starts to set in. “How am I going to run 20 miles on a random Saturday morning?” Worrying about that 20 miles isn’t going to change the outcome of today, it’s only going to intensify it. So what can you do? You focus on the 3 miles you have to do today. Tomorrow, you focus on the training plan for that day. Worrying about the future 20 miles isn’t going to change the number you have to run today. As you focus on today, you build up your endurance and little by little, you build up the stamina to run 26.2 miles. By the day of the marathon, somehow 26.2 miles doesn’t seem nearly as scary as the first day of training.

Imagine the healing that Jesus would have missed if he was sitting and worrying about what he already knew was going to happen in the future. Imagine Jesus missing all the broken people in front of him because he was filled with dread of what he was going to endure on the cross soon. Jesus practiced what he preached. Jesus was intentional about who was with him in the present and the miracles he could perform in that moment. When Jesus heard of Lazarus’ passing, he didn’t stop what he was doing and run to him. No, Jesus remained in the present, healed who he could heal in that moment and went back to Lazarus three days later (and still rose Lazarus from the dead). Rather than worrying about the past or the future, instead “be dressed and ready for service and keep your lamps burning… because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” Luke 12:35,40 Jesus was present and in him, we can be present too. Let Jesus’ intentionally on today be a reminder for us to live in the present.