Decide today to get rid of any "loser's limps" which you may still be carrying from some past experience. As followers of Jesus Christ, you and I need to break the power of the past to dominate our present and determine our future.

In Luke 9:62, Jesus said, "...No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." If we are not careful, we will allow the past to exercise a great hold on us. The more we look backward, the less able we are to see forward. The past makes no difference concerning what God can do for us today.

That is the beauty of the Christian life. Even when we have failed, we are able to ask for forgiveness and be totally cleansed of and released from our past actions. Whatever hold the past may have on us can be broken. It is never God Who holds us back. It is always our own choosing to allow the past to keep us from living to the fullest in the present and future.

Failure is waiting around the corner for those who are living off of yesterday's successes and failures. We should choose to be forward-focused, not past-possessed. We should learn to profit from the past, but to invest in the future.

In Philippians 3:13-14, the Apostle Paul writes: "Brethen, I count not myself to have apprehended; but 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."

The key here is "forgetting those things which are behind" in order to reach for "the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

To fulfill our calling in Christ, we must first forget that which lies behind. Probably the most common stronghold in a person's life is his past mistakes and failures. Today is the day to begin to shake off the shackles of the past and move forward.

The past is past. It has no life.

Source: An Enemy Called Average by John Mason.
Excerpt permission granted by Insight Publishing