Don’t Let Your Past Haunt Your Present

By Carl Kimbro, Fellowship Bible Church Celebrate Recovery Devotional Team writer, 9/29/21


Sometimes I wake up at night haunted by my past. The people I have hurt walk in my dreams single file in what seems like an unending parade. Past regrets flash before my eyes. Fear resurfaces and brings along its friend failure. Old habits and addictive sins call to me in an attempt to lure me back. They reach out with the promise that this time it will be better…this time I will find relief in my coping mechanisms…this time I can find true happiness in my addictive behaviors…this time I can believe the lies they tell me and everything will be alright. 

My “night haunts” usually occur when I am struggling in life, when work is stressful, family relationships are hard, friends seem distant. When I am weakest they surface in my dreams, tempting me to return to my sinful past and destroy my walk with Jesus.

My night haunts also remind me that I need God. I can’t handle the disappointments in life my way, because my way leads to self-destruction. Relying on the promise of Nehemiah 8:10 is where I find freedom.

“The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10.


When my goal is a relationship with God, I want to live for Him. When I live for Him, joy itself is not my goal…living for God is my goal. And in doing that, he provides me with the gift of joy and peace in my life. That joy I find in living for Him in turn removes the night haunts that seek to make me give up and turn back to my sinful past. I find the freedom and the peace I desire so much in this simple truth: In living for God, the joy of the Lord really is my peace!

It took me a long time to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal this truth to me. The fact is, he was telling me this all the time. I just wasn’t listening. I was too busy trying to solve my own problems and failing miserably. But God, who is a God of joy, a God of hope, and a God of peace, patiently waited for me to listen to the Holy Spirit as He spoke to my heart. When I listened, when I trusted, and when I believed, I found the true freedom from my past I was seeking.

In closing, I ask that you let the words of Romans 15:13 fill your heart with joy, hope and peace. Cling to these words, trust these words, believe these words, and allow God to give you the freedom from the guilt of your past you are seeking. In them will be found the abundant life in God that brings true happiness.

“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13

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