Isaiah 43:18(MSG)
Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history.
From our anchored Scripture, we shall look at one of the reasons it is difficult for God to manifest in the lives of His children and that is man dwelling in the past. God’s manifestation is difficult when man is not yet ready to receive. God did put the eyes of human beings in front of them for a simple reason; He wants man to always look forward for Him to do a new thing in the life of man. Looking to the future provokes the manifestations of God. For instance, as long as Egypt could not leave the minds of the Israelites, they could not enter the Land of Canaan. The Promised Land was ready for them but they were not ready for the Promised Land because they kept dwelling in the past.
The tragedy today is, God is ready to deliver to His children their inheritances but many of His children are not ready to take possession of their destined inheritances because they don’t want to forget what happened in the past. This was why the Israelites came out of Egypt but Egypt did not come out of them. As a result, they wandered through the wilderness for forty (40) solid years before reaching the Promised Land. In Genesis 19:17-26, the angels of God instructed Lot and his household that they should not look back while running away from Sodom, Lot’s wife was carried away by the pressure and cares of this world. She seemed to have been carried away by the material treasures she had left behind in Sodom and the pressures and chaos of the destructions behind her. When she turned back, she became a pillar of salt. There are huge repercussions for looking back, many have lost it because they kept looking into the past.
Beloved, you cannot be longing for your past and attain your future. To embrace the past is to be detained in the past; to embrace the future is to be retained in the future. The grip of your past on you makes it difficult for God to manifest new things in your life. Paul wrote in Philippians 3:13-15 “Brethren, 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. Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.” My dear friends, STOP going over old history and prepare yourself for the future that God is taking you to. Do away with every character or lifestyle that poses a threat to your God-given destiny.
O LORD, take away every character or habit that is detrimental to the manifestation of your possibilities in my life in Jesus’ Name.