Speaker: Darlene Sala | Series: Encouraging Words | I wonder if your past is keeping you from being your best right now, in the present. Past sins do that, you know.  David Eckman writes,

Sin walks us into a huge warehouse filled with video clips of us and says, “This is your life. We have thousands of clips of your failures. Many of them are so embarrassing that you wouldn’t want to show them to your children. That is all you are, and we have the record of it. So you might as well surrender to sin within, because you can’t be better than this. You are these clips—and nothing else.”

Perhaps that’s where you are right now—convinced that your past is who you are, and nothing can change. There’s good news:  you can have a brand new beginning, because, as Mr. Eckman puts it, “Jesus has burned the warehouse![1]

Isn’t that great news!  The Bible tells us,

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin–because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:6, 7, 11).

Let me put it as simply as I can.  Those video clips are a true picture of your past, no doubt about it–you might as well admit the facts. But Jesus died on the cross for your past.  He paid the penalty that justice demands for your wrongs so that you could be forgiven. When you accept God’s forgiveness, it’s as if you died and rose again to a new life.  And that’s where God wants you to live—in the present, not the past.

As a Christian, you are not the sum total of your past.  You are who God says you are—a brand new person with a brand new beginning.

[1] David Eckman, Becoming Who God Intended (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2005), 153.