This Is Something to Shout About

Oswald Chambers –  “God requires an account of what is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:15). At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise when we remember our yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God’s grace tends to be lessened by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual growth for our future. God reminds us of the past to protect us from a very shallow security in the present. […] Our yesterdays hold broken and irreversible things for us. It is true that we have lost opportunities that will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ. Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him.”  

We must be careful that we don’t let our past sins become the reason we say “no” to God, today.  The Bible is full of examples of people that God used in a mighty way who had done terrible things .. committed great sins … and yet, they found forgiveness and were given a new start as they walked with God.  There were some things that they could not do because sins do have consequences.  To imagine that we can do anything and it not affect others is an attempt to justify our sins .. to make an excuse for what we have done. 

Confession – means to agree with God.  We must lay all of our excuses aside and understand that we are no different from anyone else.  All have sinned .. there is none righteous .. only Jesus … and in Him we can be assured of forgiveness.  Forgiveness means that we are no longer facing the penalty for those sins. 

Psalm 103:8-18  "The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children— with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts"

 We don’t have to be enslaved by the sins we have committed in the past, but can be free to live for God by His grace and mercy for eternity.  Now that is something to shout about.

 As this year draws to a close, this is scripture for you to embrace, today and for the rest of your life … 

Philippians 3:13-14 “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus”  CHARLEY