Have you felt like you were stuck in between your past and God’s promises? What you’ve seen and experienced pulls at you, inviting you to give in to the bitterness and anger, to stop moving forward, yet you see in the Word that God has given you a promise.
Today I’ll share with you four ways to walk free of the past and come into God’s promises for you.
In Day 9 of Healing the Father Wound We find ourselves looking at the healing of the demoniac in Mark 5.
And while many of us do not have the experience of being filled with legions of demons as this man did, we can look at a couple of things about him and think about walking out of our own pasts.
It is said that this man was living among the tombs.
While we may not physically live among tombs, there are ways that we too, can find ourselves living within the graveyard of the past.
Things we’ve decided to memorialize, to never forget, or that we cannot forget.
- The tombs of bad memories, things that we’ve suffered.
- Tombs of past relationships that left us heartbroken.
- Tombs of betrayal and mistrust.
- Tombs of disapointments, disillusimonment and where things did not go the way we wanted.
And when we live among those tombs, bitterness and anger invite us to live with them too. They then take up residence in our hearts and affect every area of our lives.
How do we walk out from among the tombs we’ve been living among, and trust God to deliver on His promises to us, when walking in His promises has not been our experience?
1. Set your face like flint:
Isaiah 50:7 in the NIV says,
Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
and I know I will not be put to shame.
To set your face like flint as I studied it, means to stand firm, to make up your mind, make a quality decision and decide you will not shrink from that decision.
So the first way to trust God to bring out from among those tombs is to set your face like flint, decide that you will trust God, that you will trust His Word to you and that you will not move from your posture of trust no matter what.
2. Keep God’s Promises front and center
What is the promise God has given you?
I remember when I was dealing with some things in Bible College, the staff surrounded me in prayer one day about it, and one of the women said, “I think you need to ask God for a verse to stand on for this situation.”
I did ask the Lord for that verse, and soon after it came to me during my devotions.
Ask God for a verse to stand on for what you’ve been going through. And keep that verse front and center.
- Keep it in your purse to pull out and look at every day if you’re out.
- Keep it taped to your mirror while you get ready in the morning.
- Speak it out loud daily, and declare that scripture, that promise.
- Memorize that verse and keep it in the front of your mind by thinking about it and praying about it..
Which brings me to my next point
3. Pray the Promises
Pray God’s promises back to Him.
Thank Him that He is working on your behalf even if you don’t see it.
Thank Him for giving you the promise, and that Jesus paid for your sins, so that you can walk free of those tombs and into the peace and life that he has given to you.
John 10:10 in the NIV says
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
Jesus has come to give you life!
Pray that promises back to God.
If your promise is that Jesus heals the brokenhearted,
You can pray,
Thank you, Jesus, that your word says you heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds. So, I lay my broken heart at your feet for you to heal, and I open myself up to you to come and heal my wounds. I thank you father that there will be a day where I will walk free of this pain and anguish because of your promise to me.
4. Worship
The tombs of disappointment, bad memories and other things would like you to keep looking at them. They would like you to give in to bitterness, depression, anger and despair.
But when you choose to worship the Lord through praise, it puts your focus on the Lord.
There’s something special, something supernatural about worship when you are in a battle, when you are pressing in and fighting off discouragement, pain and brokenness.
2 chronicles 20:22 in the NIV says
As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.
There are so many verses in the Bible about worship. If you would like to look at more I invite you to go to a site like biblegateway and type in worship, and just see how many verses about it come up.
When you are stuck between your past and God’s promises, worshipping the Lord can carry you through and give you hope and encouragement for one more day.
You Are Not Alone
Dear sister, coming out of those tombs of our own lives, the disappointments and heartaches we face, can be a journey, but it is not one we face alone.
Our Jesus, our healer, is right beside us, always with us, and will never abandon us. At times we may not be able to see how God is going to get us to our promise, it might look completely hopeless in the natural, but remember that nothing is impossible with our God.
Can I pray for you today?
Father God, I pray for my dear sister in Christ, where the tombs of the past, whatever they are in her life, would call her to sit and wallow in bitterness, anger and disappointment… I thank you Father that you have called her out of that. And I thank you that nothing is impossible with you, that the things coming against her shudder at your very presence. Help my sister in Christ to implement standing on her promise, declaring and praying the Word, and worshipping you, and that as she does, you move her forward day by day, on a journey with you, so that one day, she looks around and she’s not among those tombs anymore, but walking in the very promise she prayed for. In Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.
