Saturday, March 22, 2008

Overcoming Through The Cross

by Donna L. Watkins

It's impossible to make a good life for yourself without overcoming your past. Too many of us live in the past and base our decisions for the present upon it. Remove it! It's gone, it's over! You can't change it, but you can change the results of it! Don't allow the past to mold your todays.

© 2008 Donna L. Watkins - Female Northern Flicker
Feeding on God's Word is the only way to shape the kind of tomorrows that you want to have. Sometimes you just have to surround yourself with continual morsels of food from the Bible.

When we choose to make life what we want it to be, it seems there are so many smooth ruts that each day seems like an alpine slide from beginning to end. It's like you have no choices and misery just takes over. Not true! God's Word will renew your mind if you stay in it.

Three times a day Daniel prayed. He was an exile in a heathen land run by an egotistical king. I imagine he needed to pray more than three times a day but he had many duties assigned to him. You can make it through this world with as much faith as Daniel had in the lion's den if you stay in God's Word and bury those wrong thoughts.

Tomorrow is Easter which represents Christ's death on the cross so that you are able to leave the past behind and take on a new life in Christ. Some people get saved and hold on to their past lives and then wonder why the Christian life isn't working for them.

The symbol of the cross is all around us. On jewelry, in print, on countryside hills, on churches and in cemeteries. I read a question today in my devotional that asked why this instrument of torture remains with us as a symbol of forgiveness and hope for so many? After all, you don't wear little gold guillotines around our necks.

The cross shows us the breadth of God's love with the cross bar and the vertical beam shows us the height and and depth of His love. It reaches from earth to sky to show us that all our sin is covered by Christ's death on it.

If you make yourself suffer and surround yourself in guilt over the past, what victory does that portray of Christ's power to redeem you? Let go of it. Stop crying over spilled milk. Wipe it up and pour another glass. Don't waste any more time and energy on something you cannot control or change.

Get on with life! You're missing the best! Focus on what you've learned from the past and what you can become because of it and then take those steps forward. A Chinese proverb says, "He who deliberates too long before taking a step, will spend his whole life on one leg."

Old habits take time to change, so schedule a specific time for doing what you know to do, even if you have to battle your way through the fear of the unknown to do it. Each time you follow through and do it, you'll be getting better at it.

Life can change, but YOU are the only one who can change it. It's not the people around you. You can be who you want to be if you find yourself and appreciate who you are. If you don't love yourself, you can't make good choices or design the kind of life that you deserve.

Take this opportunity to have your own resurrection and thank Christ for His death on the cross that promised you could have new life. God's promises are true ... take hold of them.

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