Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Remember less; Dream more




How could the Scruggs ever move forward? 

They allowed memories to fade and provided space to dream.

God created us to dream; not remember.  

Memories naturally fade.  It is fear that tempts us to hold on.  Fear whispers, “Hold on!  You don’t want to be hurt again do you?”  Fear whispers, “Make the one who hurt you feel your pain.  That will give you relief.”  

The truth is that when we continue to remember, we never move on.

When we remember, we think back and re-live what was.

When we dream, we lean forward and reach for what could be.

So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, “Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”  Joshua 4:4-7

God instructed the people to build a memorial.  The memorial was not to honor the death, disappointment, frustration, sin, and hopelessness in their past.  The memorial was so that when the people of Israel talked about their past, they talked about God's faithfulness; not their failures.

Remembering is our way of honoring a moment in our past.  So be selective with the memories you honor.  if it is not worth honoring, it is not worth remembering.

Completely forgetting all of our painful pasts will never happen.  And, at times, those painful memories will protect us from making the same mistakes in the future and they may serve as hope for someone else.  

But it will be your healing, not your horror, that will be hope for someone else. 

Put more passion into honoring the blessings than remembering the curses.  You'll never completely forget, but the less you choose to remember, the more you will be freed up to dream...in your marriage, your career, and in your heart.





No comments: