In my entire life, I’ve never met somebody that didn’t have something in their past that they didn’t like. I’ve never met somebody that didn’t have some type of skeleton in their closet, something that if they were given the chance, they would do differently, something that if they keep looking back on, that it is prohibiting them from going forward and God would want them to go forward. Now a lot of times, it’s family. You’ve done something to your family or your family is holding you under this negative light that you can’t move forward on your journey with God. I’ve got a real good solution with that. Jesus said “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword”….to separate. (Matthew 10:34 KJV). Meaning, I came to separate the unrighteous from the righteous. The ones that want to follow away from the ones that never will. If you don’t know how to fully let your past go, you are going to be stuck grounded right where you are at. Whether you have fully accomplished everything that God wanted you to or not, you won’t because you are stuck backwards. We are supposed to not dwell on what yesterday was and start looking forward to what today is. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (KJV). I hold true to that for people. I don’t want to ever have somebody in a church that I am pastoring, or at a revival, or at a crusade to stand up and tell me, “Hi, my name’s Joe, I’m a recovering alcoholic”. If you are Joe that has accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you’re Joe the Christian!!! You’re not a recovering anything!!! You don’t hear people who have fallen off the church bandwagon go back and say “yeah, I’m Joe, I’m a recovering Christian!” Use your testimonial of your past in situations like that to glorify God how you overcame it. Don’t use it as a crutch for other people to use against you.
I don’t care if you were a drug addict, addicted to porn, a prostitute, or a drunk; I care about who you are today and I care what you want to be tomorrow. All that other stuff is irrelevant. We are on the same journey here, folks: the journey of peace; the journey to get us all into the kingdom of heaven. Sometimes we need the encouragement of other people to let us know that it’s ok. Everything is going to be ok. You can either stay fully bound to your past, continue to throw your own personal pity parties, and blame everybody except yourself, and that is a big problem. People want to blame all their problems on somebody other than themselves.
Sometimes you have to clean out your closet, people. Everyone that is around you isn’t good for you. Make sure you’re in a crowd that’s going to benefit you in your journey with God. Maybe the way that you act, maybe the way that you turn that corner will show them what it is like to be God’s, to be Christian. That is the ultimate goal of what I think a church should be. We are here to help everybody, to help thy neighbor, to love thy neighbor, console people when they need it. Get people’s knees dirty and get their hands heavy. We are not here to judge anybody. God’s not hiring in the judging department.
Luke 9:62 (KJV): Jesus said “No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God!” Stop dwelling! the decisions that you’ve made to be a Christian and to follow God, the repentance that you’ve done to get to the point that you’re at today is enough! Move forward. “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not 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. (Philippians 3:12-13, NKJV). We all go through things in our life we are not proud of. We all lose friends because of things that have happened. We lose family members because of things that have happened. I would rather lose a family member and a friend than to be locked out of the kingdom of heaven. Think about that. Don’t let somebody ruin your God!
Pastor John Collins, Love That Cross 