Daily Devotional

Each day God desires for us to press on toward His goals for our life.  The word “press” expresses an intense endeavor.  We are to move intently toward God’s desires for our lives and make this a pattern of how we live.  “This one thing I do” emphasizes the importance of focus.  We are encouraged to devote ourselves to running the race of life well.  Typically, an athlete does not become a winner by doing everything, but he wins by specializing.  Few athletes are good at several sports unless they are an exception.  With this in mind, we need to focus our eyes on one goal and not let anything distract us.  We should live for what matters most and pursue God’s purpose for us.

For an athlete to win, he must get into the game.  One cannot excel at a sport by listening to lectures, watching movies, reading books, or cheering at the game.  So, we too must get involved by training, practicing, and determining to win.  We need to ask ourselves, “How much effort are we putting into winning spiritually?”  As we apply ourselves to spiritual things, God continues the process of maturing us.  He strengthens us to run the race that is planned for our life.  Paul tells Timothy, “Exercise yourself toward godliness…” (1 Timothy 4:7 NKJV) Without spiritual exercise we begin to atrophy.

To keep us from spiritual atrophy, Paul encourages us to “forget those things which are behind.”  People often are controlled by their past.  As Christians, we need to be controlled by the future. To actively move toward the future, we must forget the past.  A runner will not win the race by always looking over his shoulder to see who is coming up from behind.  If we focus on the past, we will live in the past.  The past has shaped much of what we are today, but we cannot live there, we must leave it behind.  We often use the order…past, present, and future.  Paul is encouraging us to view time as flowing from the future into the present and then into the past.  We need a future orientation.  When Paul talks about “forgetting the past,” he is not talking about somehow failing to remember the events of the past.  Biblically he is telling us to no longer be influenced or affected by the past.
 
In Hebrews 10:17 (NKJV), the writer tells us something amazing about God, “Their sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more.”  The writer of Hebrews is not saying that God will conveniently have a bad memory or a “senior moment.”  This would be impossible for God.  What he is conveying is that God will no longer hold our sins against us.  God will not let our sin effect our standing with Him or influence His attitude toward us.

We break the power of the past by living for the future.  We cannot change the past, but we can change its effect on our lives.  Paul had things that could have weighed him down, but instead he made them events that moved him ahead.  The events did not change but his understanding of them changed.  An example of this is Joseph who looked at the events of his life from God’s perspective.  “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good…” (Genesis 50:20 NKJV) Today we need to see the things of our past with the eyes of the Lord.
 
Prayer:  Lord, thank you for your forgiveness.  Help me to deal with the things of my past so that I can move forward and focus on the future I have with You.  Amen

New King James Version (NKJV) Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.