Cutting Ties with Your Past When the Enemy Won’t Let You Forget
Cutting ties with your past is often easier said than done. Yet the truth is that your life before Christ was actually not life at all. Now, this doesn’t mean your past is useless. God will often use our pasts in some way for His glory. But the Bible tells us that we have become alive in Christ and our old selves were crucified with Him. So what happens when the enemy tries to remind us of our past? What do we do when he’s trying to use our past to keep us from growing and moving forward in Christ?
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Recognize the enemy’s plan for your past.
God is making all things new… and that includes you and me. He meant it when He said that we are born again. A new creation. Transformed. When we are in Him, we are no longer the same person we used to be. The Bible actually describes this process as “dying” to your old way of life and living in Christ.
So what does the enemy do with this information? He tries to convince you that it isn’t true by telling you that you haven’t changed. You are still the same person you always were. He will even go as far as to use the people in your life to convince you of the same truth. His plan is to use your past against you. In the end, if he can make you believe that you aren’t a new creation, you won’t live the life God meant for you to live.
Remember that your old sinful self was nailed to the cross of Christ.
For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. – Romans 6:5-7 (emphasis added)
Jesus died for our sins. As Believers, this is a basic fundamental truth of our faith. But we must never forget the fact that as children of God, we were crucified with Him. Not in a physical sense of course… but spiritually, our old selves died with Christ that day. We were set free from our slavery to sin! (Don’t let the enemy tell you otherwise!)
Continue to abide in Christ and remind the enemy of your newly transformed self.
The Bible tells us that when we resist the devil, he will flee. (James 4:7) But that doesn’t mean he won’t try to deceive you ever again. He will regroup and restrategize, and we need to be ready and armed. Living in victory against the enemy is a DAILY (and sometimes minute by minute) process. We continually stand firm in God’s truth and remind the enemy of his defeat.
Learn from your past and allow God to use it for His glory instead of allowing the enemy to use it for your defeat.
I am a firm believer that God never wastes any aspect of our lives… even our mistakes and flaws. He loves to use our mistakes for His glory. Why? Because it makes the enemy look bad and reminds him of God’s power and love for mankind. While the enemy loves to see us trip up from time to time, I believe that God looks at that mistake and says, “Watch what I can do with this.”
Now, that doesn’t mean we should keep making mistakes on purpose. But what it does mean is that God’s grace is powerful. God can transform what the enemy meant for harm in our lives into something that can be used for His purpose.
So instead of being haunted by past mistakes and regrets, surrender it all to Jesus and watch Him work.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved). – Ephesians 2:4-5
Cutting ties with your past is an essential part of becoming a new creation in Christ Jesus.
*Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations taken from the NASB.
**Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
