Your 100 Day Prayer: Day 94 – Forget About the Past

by TJ Bates

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.
-Isaiah 43:18-19

I’ll be the first to admit there are times I struggle not to dwell on the past and all the mistakes I made and what might have been if I had not. How about you? Do you struggle with it? If you do, read Dr. Snyder’s encouraging words regarding this passage.

“It’s a way of saying, ‘Now stop dwelling on the stupidities and mistakes of your past because I’m going to blot out all that and make a new way for you. You’re in the desert wasteland right now, but I’m going to order just for you streams in your desert place and create an oasis where there was only dry sand and no hope of ever finding your way out.” Just a few verses later, God puts it this way: ‘I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.’ (Isa. 43:25)

“Why does God insist on giving us this kind of hope and rescue when we have given him nothing but rebellion and foolishness? Just because that’s who God is—the Holy One of Israel. It’s the mark of his character, and by that alone and nothing else we are sure of our happy destiny.”

TODAY’S PRAYER: Pray that God will do that new thing for you. Ask him to open a door that doesn’t even now exist, or create a way out that you can’t possibly imagine. God loves to make a way ex nihilo (out of nothing).

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Photo by Starnberger Fünf-Seen-Land via Flickr