I was talking on the phone with a new friend and she was talking about her past. I immediately thought of Isaiah 43:18 where God tells us to,
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”
I hear God saying “Don’t get stuck lamenting or remembering your former glory. Let’s move on. I’ve got a new plan for you – in fact, don’t you see it, I’ve already started. God is creative and thinks outside of our human “boxes.” And while He rarely repeats Himself, we tend to get stuck in a rut and do the same thin over and over.
I heard about a road in Northern Canada once. It’s actually kind of where the roads run out of nice ground. There’s a big sign there that says, “Choose your rut carefully; you will be in it for the next 50 miles.” Well, that
‘s pretty much like most of us are. We get this way of doing something and we tend to keep it up.
Well, that might work for us in life but the problem comes when we start to think that God is always going to work like He has before. Yet the Holy Spirit is blowing through, trying to rearrange things and refresh things. We get a wind of change and we get up and shut the window. Maybe God’s trying to do a new thing in your life and you’re still trying to hang on to the status quo. At one time that status quo was God’s new thing. But now He’s got something different. He’s got greater plans for you now. It might be a little risky, but it’s so much bigger, so much better.
So often God wants to move us on to something new and we resist. I believe God wants to explode into our lives as believers in powerful ways that we’ve never dreamed of or we’ve never experienced. He wants to do a new thing. In your family He wants to deliver something new instead of the best that man can think up with a little assist from God. He wants to take us into a new significance of our life, and as our life becomes more eternalized we become more involved in His rescue mission on earth.
He’s saying, “I don’t want you to just wait and see what happens. I want you to be a giver and join Me in this new thing I’m doing.”
Remember to “Forget the old things” and be open to getting out of your ruts. If the Spirit is trying to blow through your life with a bold, new breeze then don’t shut the window.