Forgetting Those Things Which Are Behind

Posted by Larry Miller on December 31, 2009 under How | Be the First to Comment

New Years Day is a new beginning, an opportunity to start over. It is a chance to draw a line at the end of an old year and start fresh. It’s not that last year’s problems have gone away. We still have Barack Hussein Obama in the White House with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi running congress. The problems they are creating are still with us… but that is all outside of each one of us. The new beginning is within each one of us, if will give it space.

In his book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey’s tells us that public victories are invariably preceded by private, internal victories. Before we can change the world around us, we need to overcome ourselves. We need to master our own inertia. That is the bad habits such as television rather than real action, hesitancy to speak up, failure to seek necessary knowledge and the like. Everyone of us who is not pleased with what we accomplished over the past year… whether it be in the personal, business or political sphere is most likely aware of one or more factors holding them back.

This leaves us with two choices: we can just say I am what I am and can’t (or won’t) do any more, or we can work toward fixing the shortcoming. When confronted with this type of situation, all those on the left can do is fix the blame. We were not created that we. We were not created to live as victims, but were placed here to make a difference in the world. To say we can’t change is saying that the redemptive work of Jesus Christ isn’t quite up to the task in our case. I, for one, am not about to tell Him that!

Because of this, we can face the new year, not with regrets about the woulda, coulda, shouldas in our past, but understanding that it is not we alone who will restore sanity to our country. We can be used as instruments in the task. None of us is insignificant. Each one of us has a part to play. The question is, will we cower at home on the couch, or will we step forward and take the battle to the enemy.

What we have done in the past matters little. We need to keep Paul’s words that he wrote to the Philippians in mind, “this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

If we believe as many say they do, that the United States of America was formed under divine guidance of the founding fathers, we need to remember that they were raised up for their task at their time. This is our task and our time. A friend of mine says she wants to live her life so that when her feet hit the floor in the morning, the devil says, “oh crap, she’s up!” What does he say when you get up?