Don’t look back in life, unless it is to learn from your past mistakes. Don’t cease learning. God will always fulfill our needs. One of our biggest mistakes is not appreciating what God gives us. Consider the example of the Apostle Paul. He wrote, “I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11-13). Paul knew that God has a purpose for those He calls. God gives us what we need to succeed. If we fail in life, it is because we do things our way; we follow our reasoning, not God’s. Many people, including some of us in God’s Church, waste their time crying over past mistakes, rather than learning from them and moving forward.
Remember what happened to Lot’s wife. God knew that she and her family would be destroyed if they remained in Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot accepted God’s order to leave. Lot’s wife, despite God’s warning, looked back. She wanted to reason her way—do the things she wanted to do. She looked back and became a pillar of salt, just as God had warned.
Likewise, when our forefathers cried out for deliverance from Egyptian slavery, God delivered them. But did they come out of Egypt—really? No. They never left Egypt—its ways of living and thinking. All along their Exodus, they took Egypt with them. Could this be our major handicap today? Could this be our way of wanting God’s help to overcome slavery? Let us move forward in whatever we do—God’s way. Let us see the ultimate wonderful reward and do the best we can, with all our hearts, to obtain it. As Paul said, “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12-14).
~Dibar Apartian
