Your Past Can't Hold You Any Longer!

Offences, hurts, wounds, pains, things that make us fill up with sorrow are a part of life.  Everyone experiences these things.  A wounded spirit who can bare?   Look at the life of Joseph who was betrayed by his family, treated unfairly by his slave owners, thrown into prison for a crime he did not commit without any advocate or care from someone that would visit him or plead his case.   There is no record that he even got a fair trial, and most like did not.  

God gave him a dream that the sun, moon and stars would bow down to him, and the first thing you know he is sold by his brothers into slavery.  Instead of being in the highest position like he saw in the dream he was cast down to the lowest of positions, slavery.  The exact opposite of the dream took place in his life.   As he began to work in Potiphar's house as a slave he worked his way up to the highest position that you could have as a slave.  I'm sure it felt like he was rising up again, getting at least some small recognition, or honor, some forward progress.    After all if he worked hard enough and pleased his master perhaps in time his master would free him.   But this is not what happened.  Instead of things getting better, they got worse again.   He was charged with a crime that he did not commit, and this happened because of his righteousness, his commitment to serve God.

Imagine you life getting started out like this?   Who could fix this mess?  Only God.   The problem that we have is that when we are young and our family hurts us, many people carry that hurt all the way through life.   When we begin to get out in the world and we are not elevated to the position that we worked for and deserved, we carry those hard feelings on our shoulder.  When unfair things happen and sickness or unfair opinions from others are directed towards us, we put up walls and shut everyone and everything out.  And just like Joseph we end up in a prison of sorts, isolated and alone, looking for a way out.

Just like Joseph God will bring you up out of there, but there are somethings that can misdirect our attention and keep us from rising above it.

Modern opinions tell us that we need to be healed of our past before we can rise above our circumstances and move on to a better future?  Is that what happened to Joseph?  No.  God raised him to an elevated position without his past having been healed.   We can find ourselves in the place where we are letting the pains, rejections and failures of the past keep us crippled and we fail to move forward into our future.   Joseph didn't allow this to happen.   Yes, his brothers committed a crime against him that changed his life forever, but it didn't matter because God was with Joseph.  The enemy will remind you over and over what your family did to you, to cripple you, to hurt you over and over again.   That's when you have to square back your shoulders and declare, "It doesn't matter what they did, because God is with me, I will rise up in spite of their attacks!"      The enemy will remind you over and over what your husband or your child said and did to hurt you.   The enemy will try to make you relive it everyday in your mind.  Don't relive that everyday!  When that comes to your mind, dismiss and say, "That does not matter at all, because GOD is with me!"    The enemy will bring back to your memory every time you were treated unfairly, lied about, or accused falsely.   You know what?  The enemy cannot keep your life in bondage to those memories because God is with you and it is time for you to realize those things are insignificant when compared to the fact that God is with you!

No. You don't have to receive acknowledgment from your family of the wrongs they committed before you can rise up in life to be all that God created you to be.   You do not have to prove that you were innocent, and that everything that was said was a lie.   Joseph never did prove his innocence but that didn't stop God from raising him up out of that prison, because GOD WAS WITH  HIM.   You don't have to fix things before things will get better for you.  Josephs' life was so messed up there was NO WAY he could fix it, but that didn't matter, because God was with him, and God brought him out!

It's time to look at that pain inside of you and say, "It doesn't matter how I was hurt, God is with me and he will bring me out!"

It's time to look at that injustice that was done to you and say, "It doesn't matter how I was lied about and done wrong, God is with me, and he will bring me out!"

It's time to look at that self made prison you are in, those walls that you have put up around your life and say, "It doesn't matter, God is with me, and He will bring me out of this place!"

Praise God!  Your past can't hold you any longer.   It's time to stop trying to fix it and to realize that God is with you and he will bring you to a better place in spite of it!