Yearnings and Glitches

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. --Philippians 3:13-14

I love this verse because of the clear and concise way in which Paul describes how our walks with Christ should and should not look. We should be walking with a sharp focus on our goal; we should not be walking with our heads turned around looking back at the past. If I am looking back at my past with longing, I am missing chances to grow and receive God's blessing in my life today. Change is difficult for human beings, but our race can only be run forward. We are trapped by time and cannot move backwards. If we aren't moving ahead towards our goal, we are stagnating. Stagnating Christians are benefiting neither God nor themselves and certainly not the non-believers who are looking on.

In a similar way, I am not beneifiting anyone if I'm constantly lamenting my past. I think that most of us have some event or events in our past that we would like to redo a little differently. I have talked to some women who describe a time period in their past as their "rebellious phase." I certainly had a phase like this as well, but I look back at that phase in my life as a glitch in my past--a time period where I was acting in a way that was out of character for me and inconsistent with how I've lived the rest of my life. This glitch does not define me or who I am in Christ. If I spend my time looking back and regretting my my past, I am missing out on all that God has in store for me today and tomorrow. The past is done, and God forgets all about it as soon as I repent, so I need to forget about it, too. Or, if I can't forget about it, then I need to learn from it and move forward from it rather than setting up camp right in the middle of yesterday.