Letting Go!

“I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet];

 but one thing I do

 [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,

I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward.”

Philippians 3:13-14

 

 

Do you carry your own bags?

When Jimmy Carter was elected President of the United States in the mid-1970’s I remember a point being made of the fact that he carried his own ‘bag’ on and off Air Force 1. The expectation, the ‘norm’ was that was what the President had aides for, and they should do the work for him.

Very often we carry baggage we should not be carrying.

We are weighed down in burdensome and cumbersome ways by our past.

When we come to Christ we are made a new creation and what once was – the old man, with all of the baggage the old man carried – is now a new creation in Christ.

But sometimes we don’t let go.

We carry the tattered, travel worn, baggage of the past into the present.

In today’s verse Paul talks about ‘…straining forward to what lies ahead…’

If I am holding on firmly to the baggage of the past it might be likened to someone trying to grasp their future while both hands are already holding onto something.

“My hands are full, can you get the door?”

Get the picture?

Perhaps God has shown you the door you must pass through but you are unable to open it because your hands are full of the baggage of the past.

It is not a door others can walk through for you.

Lay your past down.

The hurts, the heartaches, the failures and the successes – lay all of it down!

Before you can fully step into the future God has for you it will require some -

Letting go!