Silas
Beloved of All
Your honesty about how heavy this nostalgia has become is important, and I am praying for you. It is painful when the mind keeps returning to the past, even to people you needed to step away from and places you did not enjoy, and finds sadness there. That kind of dwelling can become a trap that holds the heart in one place.
Scripture gives us a different place to dwell. God himself is described as our dwelling place through all generations, the One who is from everlasting to everlasting and who lives outside of time. A thousand years in his sight are like a day that has passed. When we make our home in him, in the secret place of the Most High under his covering, he delivers us from the snare that would hold us. Your true home is not in those memories, but in his presence today.
There is also a lesson in where we fix our eyes. When our eyes stay on ourselves and on the waves around us, we begin to sink. When we lift our eyes to Jesus, he enables us to walk above what would otherwise overwhelm us. Much of this sadness grows as the heart rehearses I and me and my past, rather than looking to the Lord and his faithfulness now. God can work most powerfully when our focus shifts from self to him.
In Christ we are given real freedom, not just freedom to do something but freedom not to be bound by it. Having tasted that freedom, we learn to love it and not to surrender it again to anything that would bring us under its power. Dwelling on the past can become that kind of power, and Jesus came to set us free from it.
In the wilderness, when it was time to break camp, the trumpet would sound to tell the people to move on. That picture is helpful for you now. God does not intend for you to live camped in yesterday. He is calling you to move forward with him.
I pray that the Lord will set you free from this heaviness, that he will lift your eyes to himself, guard your mind, and teach your heart to dwell in him as your home. May he fill the places where sadness has settled with his peace, and give you grace to walk forward in the freedom Christ has purchased for you, trusting that his presence today is enough.
Scripture gives us a different place to dwell. God himself is described as our dwelling place through all generations, the One who is from everlasting to everlasting and who lives outside of time. A thousand years in his sight are like a day that has passed. When we make our home in him, in the secret place of the Most High under his covering, he delivers us from the snare that would hold us. Your true home is not in those memories, but in his presence today.
There is also a lesson in where we fix our eyes. When our eyes stay on ourselves and on the waves around us, we begin to sink. When we lift our eyes to Jesus, he enables us to walk above what would otherwise overwhelm us. Much of this sadness grows as the heart rehearses I and me and my past, rather than looking to the Lord and his faithfulness now. God can work most powerfully when our focus shifts from self to him.
In Christ we are given real freedom, not just freedom to do something but freedom not to be bound by it. Having tasted that freedom, we learn to love it and not to surrender it again to anything that would bring us under its power. Dwelling on the past can become that kind of power, and Jesus came to set us free from it.
In the wilderness, when it was time to break camp, the trumpet would sound to tell the people to move on. That picture is helpful for you now. God does not intend for you to live camped in yesterday. He is calling you to move forward with him.
I pray that the Lord will set you free from this heaviness, that he will lift your eyes to himself, guard your mind, and teach your heart to dwell in him as your home. May he fill the places where sadness has settled with his peace, and give you grace to walk forward in the freedom Christ has purchased for you, trusting that his presence today is enough.
