We’ve
lived at our present address for 20 years. During that time we’ve managed to
fill up the shop and load up the garage. Even the downstairs storage area is
full. Danny decided Saturday it was time to clean out the shop and it was a
chore! He called me out there once and asked me to look in a box he found. As I
peered into the contents I found it was a box of my dad’s mementoes. There were
a couple of AA coins, a 1949 quarter, a 1960 penny, several Father’s Day
ornaments and a copy of our wedding announcement from the paper in 1973. What a step back in time. Next Danny showed
me a bag of clothes. Inside that bag were little dresses my mother had made our
oldest daughter over 35 years ago. As I held one of them up, more memories
flooded my heart. I could see our daughter in that dress!
I
found that I no longer wanted to clean out the shop! Lots of the “junk” in
there had special memories from some part of our lives. From old dolls to old papers, it was amazing.
You
can’t keep everything. If you do, you’ll end up with a mess on your hands.
Although lots of these things were treasures, they are old, broken, tattered
and useless. Do I want to hold onto them? Yes. Do I need to? No. While the
special things reminded us of precious memories, we cannot live in our
memories. If we were to be gone, most of the stuff would be quickly discarded
because no one else has our memories. We agreed to keep the most important
things and were very selective, but the rest just has to go. We’ll have no room for new things, space to
work or even a garage for the car if we don’t clean out.
Precious
memories are wonderful and mementoes of happy times can be great to look at.
But we cannot live in the past. We need
to move on and make new memories. We want room for our lives to be productive
and precious, but we can’t if we keep looking at the past and living there.
While we cherish many things about our history, if we only live in the past it’s
like living in a museum. Great to look at but untouchable.
Are
you wishing for the former days? Do you wish you could go back and live in
happier times? Are you content to live in the past? Are you longing for the
mementoes of your older days to be your present times? God loves your wonderful
memories but He’s ready to move you on to a new day. He’s ready for you to
clean out your heart and mind for new experiences and to help you be able to
live in the present.
Oh
beloved, God has wonderful plans for your life! Even now, when you may be
hurting over lost treasures or not wanting to let go. He doesn’t ask you to
forget your past, but He’s asking you to move on. To move on with Him is to
find more treasures, the kind that moths and dust don’t ruin. If you will trust God, He will take you by the
hand and go with you into new things. For He always has fresh anointing for the
new things He wants to do in your life! Keep the old memories, for they are
silver to your life. But let God take you on to blessings and ministry, so that
your life will remain useful and pliant and so that others will benefit from
your walk with the Lord.
God
loves you so much that He woos you out of the past and into the future. And He
cares about you so much that He’s not willing for you to remain in the cobwebs
and junk of past days. What a blessing it is to know He wants to take you out
of the museum and into the new life He wants to build just for you!
2
Corinthians 5:17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new
person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
Isaiah
43:19 For I am about to do something
new. See, I have already begun! Do you
not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers
in the dry wasteland.
Mathew
6:19-20 Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat
them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and
rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.
Ecclesiastes
3:11 Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted
eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of
God's work from beginning to end.
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