How many times have you looked back on your life, either dwelling on the joy or pain of the memory?
All of us from time-to-time dwell on something from our past.
For everything there is a season,
a time for every activity under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die.
A time to plant and a time to harvest.
A time to kill and a time to heal.
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
A time to cry and a time to laugh.
A time to grieve and a time to dance.
A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
A time to search and a time to quit searching.
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to tear and a time to mend.
A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
A time to love and a time to hate.
A time for war and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
The writer is talking about a specific time frame, A time to, not a never-ending one!
Continually focusing on the past good or bad isn’t healthy. Both keep us trapped and prevent us from moving on.
What you focus on will eventually come out of you! I have found that I can’t live out of memories from the past, especially the painful ones, yes occasionally I go down memory lane with family photographs of when my children were small, or photographs of when my mother was alive and sometimes, they are bittersweet. I can focus on some of the wonderful times in the past that I’ve had with the Holy Spirit, times I’ve spent hours on the floor bathed in His love, joy and peace. Where I’ve laughed till it hurt, sobbed till there was no more tears left in me and shook till my shoes flew off! Each experience has bought great freedom and healing to my heart and given me a greater boldness and confidence and a greater hunger for God. I can remember the times the Holy Spirit has used me to preach a great message, that has seen others saved and healed. I can recall the times the Holy Spirit has used me powerfully to minister to others, hearing words come out of my mouth that only the Holy spirit could inspire. I can also remember the times of spiritual dryness, the pain from the betrayal of others, the times of being in the backside of the desert and the dark pit of despair, feeling trapped and alone! Highs and lows, but, if allowed to have power over my mind such thinking will make me unstable!
“ ………Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.” James :5-8
The way we receive is from the way we believe. Jesus said to the two blind men, “it is unto you according to your faith”; meaning it is your faith that determines your outcomes in life. Whether or not it is going to happen for us, it has nothing to do with God's faith, it has everything to do with what we believe. We must train our brains to think more like God than the world!
Is there anything to look back on that will truly benefit me?
Absolutely, the one thing we should definitely look back to is the CROSS!
“When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished,’ and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” John 19:30.
Tetelestai, it is finished. We've no doubt heard these words during a Good Friday service or during our reading of the Gospels. But why does Jesus say it? And why does he reserve this as his last and final words? "It is finished" indicates he has paid the price in full, and through his sacrifice, the bridge between God and sinful man had been established!
No matter how much our culture tries to tell us to, "pull yourself together” we can do nothing when it comes to sin. We have waged an eternal debt Romans 3:20 and someone must pay it.
In the Old Testament, a family would take a spotless lamb, one without blemish, and would sacrifice it as a symbol for it taking the place of the sins of the family. Granted, the lamb itself could not remove their sin-debt. But it helped them to recognize that they had a serious spiritual sickness, and they needed a Saviour to rescue them. Jesus was born in Bethlehem which was also the place where the sacrificial lambs were bred. He was called the lamb of God. ‘The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”. John 1:29.
As soon as the priest had killed the animal, he would emerge from the place of sacrifice and declare to the waiting crowd “it is finished” Tetelestai in Hebrew. In this sacrifice, all the sins of Israel were symbolically placed on the lamb that was killed and punished in their place.
Tetelestai was also used in a court system. Colossians 2:13-14, where Paul says ‘He cancelled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross’.
Paul is referring to a common practice at the time where criminals serving a prison sentence would have their crimes listed on a note that was posted at the prison where they were kept, and it correlated the crimes to the amount of punishment they were to serve.
Then, at the end of their sentence, the jail keeper would stamp the paper with Tetelestai
"PAID IN FULL."
Jesus served our prison sentence for us, and when He cried out, "IT IS FINISHED", this is exactly what he was alluding to. PAID IN FULL!
So what was going on in the temple that Passover morning?
The Passover lamb that was to be sacrificed that afternoon is being tied to the horns of the altar. At that very same time, Jesus is being nailed to the cross and the Jews are singing the Hallel! Josephus a Jewish historian who lived in that century records that there were 2.5 million Jews there at Passover.
What are multitude singing?
As Jesus was being nailed to cross, he was hearing these words:
The Lord is God, shining upon us. Take the sacrifice and bind it with cords on the altar. They were singing Psalm 118: 27 NLT
The sixth hour of the day is 12pm and the ninth hour is 3 pm, which is the time of eve sacrifice.
“At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock.At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, Eli,Eli, lema sabachthani? Which means My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
Acts 3:1 tells us the nineth hour is time for prayer, also the time of the evening sacrifice.
God predetermined when His son would die, not only the day but the very hour.
Jesus died at the same time as eve sacrifice.
God even chose the hymn, King David prophesied these events through the psalms that he wrote and sang.
Thankfully, Jesus decided to take our place. Part of the reason why the Old Testament had so much sacrifice was because it foreshadowed Jesus's work on the cross.
Once we realize that we cannot get to heaven on our own, and what Jesus has done for us, we realize the weight of the words, IT IS FINISHED! God's plan unravelled over the span of thousands of years of him yearning for his people to come back to him, and for him carving a way for us to do so with nine-inch nails in his wrists in feet.
IT IS FINISHED means that we can stop trying to clean up our act before "being accepted," and instead, come to Christ as broken sinners in need of salvation. Christ died for you, and he died for me. The more we understand the great story of God's love, the more we can understand how deep that agape love is for us.
“He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.
Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment], yet we [ignorantly] considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God [as if with leprosy].
But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole” Isaiah 53: 3-5.
If you look back at anything this week, look back at the cross, don’t let your thinking stop you from receiving forgiveness, love, peace and healing for your mind and body!
Look back and have a blessed Easter!
Men have said that the cross of Christ was not a heroic thing, but I want to tell you that the cross of Jesus Christ has put more heroism in the souls of men than any other event in human history. –John G. Lake
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