“You only live once but if you work it right, once is enough.”
On the Back 9, I believe that God wants us to live our lives, “glancing back and gazing forward!” Realizing…the past is the past…wins, losses, failures, mistakes, dreams fulfilled and unfulfilled. God is a forward God…who rebukes, forgives, restores, renews, and rewards. He desires for us to learn from our yesterdays… and live life on purpose.
We have all seen it. Some of us may even be living this currently…”camping out on our losses or our wins”….that are long since in God’s rearview mirror and should be in ours as well. Living in the present is where it is at. Of course….glancing at the past always teaches us…it a great thing….experience is a great teacher! The best teacher though is learning from someone else’s experience/past. But being stuck…in the past is terrible. You can’t live on past wins…nor live in past losses…It is about today……..NOW.
I love how Philippians 3:13-15 encourages us to press on/move forward. “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.”
Recently…I was conducting a “spring cleaning!” I am known to do them monthly whether it is spring or not…I am not known to be a “keeper of things or a collector!” I decided to throw away all my trophies, Bill’s trophies, and the kids’ trophies, if they were not 1st place trophies. After all, that is all we want to remember anyway, right? The “wins or the first places!”
I think we all agree as time marches on, NO one really wants to spend any time remembering the 2nd places and on down the line! I checked with everyone and they all agreed…to toss. I never want any of us to forget what we have learned in the past, but in our family we agree that we have learned more from our losses/mistakes than from our wins.
If you are breathing and you are reading this post, I want to encourage you to know that God’s not done. NO matter where this post finds you…in the up’s of life or the down’s…HE is there and He is not asleep.
His desire is for us to look at each day as a “NEW day” to do “NEW things!” Of course…there are circumstances that we all come to which are hard, heart wrenching and painful…but God is in the midst of these as well. When things have been hard in my life, really hard, I have disciplined myself…to first understand and know that Jesus was fully man, and experienced all that I could possibly experience.
So first, He understands. Second, He is present and active in my personal life situations. I apply the scripture in Jeremiah 29:11 that says He has a plan and a future for me. That scripture was written for the Israelites when they had been in captivity for hundreds of years…God had not forgotten them. In the verse that follows…after the promise for a hope and a future…God wanted them to come to Him and pray to Him and seek Him with all of their hearts.
That is where the rubber meets the road for all of us.
Right now.
Today.
No matter what your circumstance–winning or losing or in between–we are to seek HIM in all things. KNOW HE HAS a plan for us today…this moment….but it is our CHOICE. Where are we going to choose to live? Gazing forward….expectant of a Holy God to complete His good work?
Hosea 6:3, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”
I find obedience to the RIGHT CHOICE IN ATTITUDE….can shoot you forward….into His hands and His plans! God never said life would be easy, but He promised good things to His children…the trouble is we take His word out of context. We don’t study and apply it as He instructs us to do. I can’t reteach the Bible right here but I can tell you…read it and apply it as you GAZE into today and tomorrow. When you do this…WATCH what happens! I dare you!
Blessings for gazing into God’s future for you!!