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What is it in your past that plagues you and haunts you and depresses you and keeps you in bondage? There are principles and strategies from God’s Word that will help you put your past behind you. Whatever it is, whatever has happened to you, whatever you have done, our God is so awesome, so huge, so merciful and gracious, that he can bring you healing and release from your past.
No doubt many of you are struggling with some memory, some past history, that you just can’t get out of your head. Whether from your childhood, from a failed relationship, from a former job situation, or from bad decisions and choices of your own, that past tends to hang around your neck like a ton of bricks. You stay busy and try to forget it, but in those quiet moments, when the noise abates and the activity subsides, you are left with the dreadful memories from your past that seem to affect everything you do.
I remember talking with my good friend, Pastor Donald Cole years ago, and I said, “Pastor Cole, sometimes I’m intimidated when people ask me for help or advice and I simply refer them to God’s Word. I’m not a counselor; I don’t know all the lingo; but I truly believe the answers are in the Bible, not in people. Yet they often respond as though I just don’t understand; their situation is too complex to just go to the Bible for help. But I don’t know anything else to give them.”
His response encouraged me, for he had wonderful wisdom and a heart of compassion. He said, “Mary, if the Bible doesn’t have an answer, there is no answer. Never be intimidated to urge anyone to find their needs met in the Word of God.”
So, if you truly want to be free from your past today, I tell you wholeheartedly that God’s truth as revealed in the Bible can do it for you. Truth—and only truth—will set you free. The Bible is truth, Jesus is truth. That’s a really good place to start.