In this new decade, we are afforded opportunities that only come once every 10 years. For many of us, we’ve come to a point where we feel like, we just can’t get to the other side of certain patterns, relationships, behaviors and positions in our life. Myself included.
As I began walking with the Lord more seriously than ever this past year, I continually felt like there was a bungie cord tied around my waist and anchored to all my past mistakes. I realized there was grace, I asked for forgiveness, but this anchor would only let me get so far. It was frustrating to say the least.
I felt the Lord prompting me to begin taking an inventory of my life, my relationships, my habits, even my vocabulary. Before moving forward once more, I felt him asking me –
What needs to stay behind and what needs to come with you?
Up until this point, I felt like I’ve been stuck going around the same mountain and into the same valley for so long that it’s become a part of who I am. I was living in the valley of darkness and toiling on the mountain of insecurity, doubt, false burdens, and fear. I had been there so long, I began surrounding myself with people who were stuck in the exact same cycle.
Every day I would wake up, walk up the side of the mountain out of the valley and toil away just to return that night back to a pit of despair. Every once in a while you get tired of the monotony and you decide enough is enough. Right? You pack up your things and take the chance of facing the valley ahead.
Only thing is as you begin to walk through, you realize it gets deeper before it gets steeper and the next thing you know you see the light on the other side. As you emerge, you’re faced eye to eye with yet another mountain to climb, but this mountain doesn’t look familiar so rather than push through to the other side you turn buck around and go back to the other side.
The enemy keeps us in these cycles to keep us from reaching the other side so that we miss our perfect time with God. But God….has something so much more for you if you could just leave those things behind and push towards what’s ahead.
WHAT GOD HAS PLANTED INSIDE EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US IS SO MUCH BIGGER THAN YOUR FEARS, IT’S BIGGER THAN YOUR INSECURITIES, IT’S BIGGER THAN YOUR PAIN.
We can’t take our old habits, our old mountains, our old ways into this New Decade. It’s time to take inventory and make a decision – Do You want what’s old or do you want what’s new?
Behold I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. - Isaiah 43:19
Don’t let the new thing that God is doing be tainted by the old residue of your past. If you’ve been coming to these meetings you know that what God is doing inside of you, your purpose, your calling, God's will for your life, it must be protected.
I encourage you today to take inventory of what needs to go and what needs to stay. Because as the apostle paul said in Philippians 3:13-14: I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before. I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.