Where to Lay Your Foundation for the Future
The future can seem dark if we cover our eyes with our past. The enemy can hand us the blindfold of past failures, but ultimately, it is our choice to put it on. After a while, we forget that we’ve put the blindfold on, and we begin to believe that everything ahead of us truly is dark.
Our identity is in God alone, even in our darkest days. Perhaps, deep down, we know that. However, it’s very easy to adorn ourselves with the hurt and failures we’ve collected along the way.
Over time, we become clad in the aftereffects of failed relationships, shackled in our academic failures, and draped with the pain of regret. These elements of our past weigh us down until the path ahead of us becomes eternally perilous and each step forward only promises more burdens. Suddenly, the arrival of each new year and the pressure of New Year’s resolutions do nothing but provoke fear that your past struggles will wreak havoc once again. Blinded and weighed down by our history, life becomes disorienting, lonely, and hopeless.
How can we succeed academically if all we’ve ever done is struggle and barely pass our courses? What safety do we have in our future relationships if we’ve only experienced hurt from those close to us? Where is the sturdy ground when last year was turned upside down by things that were out of our control?
These are all questions that many of us have at some point in our lives. These are very human questions. As imperfect beings, we seek to make sense of the future by interpreting it through the only thing we do know: our past. The thing about the past; however, is that the enemy delights in imprisoning us with what was rather than what is to come. He wants us to use the evil he has woven into our past as the foundation for our perception of the future. The enemy wants this because he knows that we will eventually break without the hope and peace that God’s design for our future offers us.
Just as our house can only be as mighty as the foundation upon which it stands, our future can only be as joyous as that in which we place our hope. Picture that one thing that seemed to have overtaken your life last year that you fear will travel with you into this new one. It could be your struggle with anxiety, your academic failures, or even frequent nightmares.
Take hold of that part of your past and listen to what your Father in Heaven wants to tell you about it: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:18-19).
Do you hear the good news? Newness is coming! Lay your past to rest at this very spot. The Lord sees every burden you have dressed yourself with and has called you to take His newness instead. So take off your blindfold woven from the mistakes of the past! Shrug off that heavy coat of regret! Toss away those cuffs of brokenness and shame! They have no claim over you or your identity, and they have no claim over your future.
Our God is a God of audacious love—one who will make a new way where it seems impossible; He will make rivers of hope and joy flow in what once seemed a future of desolate desert. So jump up! Give the Lord your praise! Newness is coming! You and your future are secure in the hands of Jehovah Nissi, the Lord, our Banner and Victory! Lay your foundation of the future in the promise of the Lord rather than your past.