Forgetting Former Things

As spring has pushed forward I feel like a flower in a garden pushing its way through a handful of surrounded weeds. I find myself asking for strength to focus on God and not the ongoing things of the past. I hassle with time because moment by moment something continues to pop up distracting me to move about.

Yet I look to the Lord and He reminds me of what He told the Israelites to, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert,” Isaiah 43:18-19.

In this text it says don’t stay focus on things of the past. God delivered the Israelites from the Egyptians in an astonishing way. However, the Lord God was telling them, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.” You think your former deliverance was glorious but when I send the Messiah all other things of the past will not be worthy of your remembrance and consideration.

It continues saying, “I will do a new thing, “a work that has never been seen before. As we look further it says “making a way in the wilderness.” The wilderness is a desert, a dry land that is uninhabited, and abandoned. In the desert only a few things sprout, the ground is cracked from having no moist.
If we have our eyes fixed on the aches and pain of yesterday we won’t see how God is making a way out of what society calls recession. We will be in depression in a slump, if we keep our eyes off of the Lord.

The text continues stating in the “rivers in the desert," not only will God go to the abandoned place but He is going to the desolate, underground streams, a place of waste.

God today has something for us that He is working new but He is saying to His children, “don’t live in the past because the past is just that, it is the past.” God is a forward moving God. As He moves forward we have to go with the flow and move right along with the Lord.

How are you living today, is it in the past? Are you consumed with ancient memories? As long as we keep our mind frame of what happened long – ago, it is going to be hard to see where He has for you to go.


If we stay in the past too long we will miss what God is doing in the present and in the future.

Consider letting go of the past and moving with the thrust of the Lord. Ask God to forgive you for holding on to the things of yesterday. Beseech the Lord to help you study His Word so you can be renewed in your mind. Pray to God to create in you a new Spirit that thrives after His heart. Call upon our heavenly Father to help you evaluate yourself so you can discern what He has to say as you move forward.