Today Is For Living

Posted on Mar 13, 2017 Topic : Weekly Devotionals

Trust the past to God’s mercy, the present to God’s love, and the future to God’s providence. - Augustine

If I were to ask you to describe your past failings and regrets, would your response be so vivid, detailed, and clear that the truth would be known, that these failings and regrets are not at all in your past but are very much in your present? Do you keep such things alive by giving them time and meditation, both of which are gifts you could be giving to God instead?

It’s time to discard past mistakes and let yesterday do the job it was made for. Yesterday is our wise teacher when we glean its many lessons. Yesterday is our testimony when we can share about our transformation through faith and God’s love. Yesterday is our reminder that God can lead us through loss and error and pride and pain. But yesterday should never be our substitution for today.

If your regrets are alive and kicking, it’s because you’re fueling them with current thoughts and nurturing them with the oxygen and space of your present. Do you need help carrying those regrets to the foot of the cross? Are you ready to leave them for dead? Because the power of the resurrection doesn’t exist so you can resurrect your mistakes and tend to them; it exists so you can live abundantly in the present and have hope for a future. God’s mercy has covered those diﬃculties and mistakes so you can be alive in the moment. So you can be used for greater purposes than being a life-support machine for your past. You decide each and every morning what you are going to give your presence and passions over to today—the unchangeable past or the abundant and transforming present.

LIFE Reflections

Which regrets do you nurture and keep alive? Are you prepared to give them up for something better?

Old wounds can reopen time after time. They can start to feel like an acceptable normal when they are instead an unfortunate obstacle to wholeness. Let them truly heal so they are a source of wisdom and not pain.

If you have a friendship or relationship with someone who lingers in yesterday’s turmoil rather than today’s promise, show them God’s mercy. Accompany them with the language of grace.

Intention: Today I will make sure my regrets are not being nourished by my actions and thoughts. I’ll give energy and effort only to today’s hope.

Prayer

I’m so glad to have moved on in my life. I don’t want my past failings to become my focus today. I have so much more to experience in this moment and in the future because of you. Redirect my thoughts and my sense of direction. Lead me away from yesterday. It has done its job.