Over the past few weeks, a number of groups have popped up on Facebook with titles such as "You know you grew up in (enter name of city) if..." or "You know you graduated from (enter name of school) if..."
People are flocking to these groups, loving to reminisce about "the good old days." While a lot of this is fun, and has allowed some old friends to reconnect, constantly looking back can be a dangerous thing.
One problem with reminiscing is that our brains tend to filter out some of the bad times. It also enhances the good ones. We forget how much pain was caused when a relationship ended badly, or how someone was almost killed by the poor decisions they (or we) made.
We want to remember the good times. We want to remember all the fun, without any of the consequences.
Many in the church today are potentially guilty of the same thing. They long for the days when preachers looked a certain way, preached a certain way and God moved a certain way.
It is easy to remember our first "real" experience with God, and some of us feel like if we could duplicate that environment, others can experience God the way we did.
It is not bad to review and remember. We all have a heritage and things that took place in our lives that make us who we are today. The danger lies when we want to return to certain times and places and exclude what lies ahead of us, or we try to apply a spiritual formula from our past to our present and/or future.
Just like when we remember high school or "the good old days," we tend to forget the struggles we had in our early spiritual walk. Maybe God moved in a special way during that time because we really needed Him to move in that way.
This does not mean we are to embrace every "new" thing that shows up on the scene. It also does not mean we reject the past as "in the past." We simply must be careful not to so focus on the past that it hinders our future.
Conversely, we cannot allow the hurts of the past to cripple our future. Yes, some hurts teach us a lesson and keep us safe. For example, when a toddler burns their hand on the stove, they learn the lesson not to touch it.
But some people allow emotional hurts to affect future relationships, both individually and in their spiritual walk. The refuse to let someone "in" out of fear of being hurt again, or they bail at the first sign of trouble or offense.
I think the Apostle Paul was referring to both of these when he said wrote these words to the Phllippians:
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, 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, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. — NIV
We all have things, both good and bad, in our pasts. We certainly need to learn from the lessons in life, hold firm to the heritage we have, but also to reach forward to what is ahead of us.
It is hard to run this race when we are constantly looking behind us, or focusing on how a previous race was run.
May the Blog be With You.
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