...from the desk of Rande Wayne Smith D.Min., Th.M., M.Div.

Battlegrounds - 3

CARRYING THE WEIGHT OF THE PAST

Luke 5:1-11
One day Jesus was standing on the shore of Lake Gennesaret while the people pushed their way up to him to listen to the word of God. He saw two boats pulled up on the beach; the fishermen had left them and were washing the nets. Jesus got into one of the boats – it belonged to Simon – and asked him to push off a little from the shore. Jesus sat in the boat and taught the crowd.
When he finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Push the boat out further to the deep water, and you and your partners let down your nets for a catch.”

“Master,” Simon answered, “we worked hard all night long and caught nothing. But if you say so, I will let down the nets.” They let them down and caught such a large number of fish that the nets were about to break. So they motioned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They came and filled both boats so full of fish that the boats were about to sink. When Simon Peter saw what had happened, he fell on his knees before Jesus and said, “Go away from me, Lord! I am a sinful man!”

He and the others with him were all amazed at the large number of fish they had caught. The same was true of Simon’s partners, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”

They pulled the boats up on the beach, left everything, and followed Jesus.
 

May the Lord grant that we may engage in contemplating the mysteries of His Heavenly wisdom with really increasing devotion to His glory and our edification.  Amen.

When I raced competitively, I trained by wearing 5 pound weights on each wrist.
My theory was that this would build my endurance to such an extent that on the day of the race when I took the weights off, I would feel light and free. I would be able to run like the wind!

In the so-called “race of life,” however, there are many people who are “running” with the weights on. Among this extra “baggage” that a lot of us carry is the weight of the past. It’s heavy … it’s inhibiting … and it can be destructive.

Now every human being has a past … we cannot escape that. But our mental and spiritual health largely depends upon our ability to cope with that past.

Sigmund Freud was on target when he looked to the past to explain the pattern of present behavior.
Now I don’t think his conclusion was correct, but he did realize that a person with an unresolved past … a memory of something … is going to have a difficult time coping with the present or future.

Most people I meet who are weighted down by the past end up using that as an excuse for their present behavior … an excuse to avoid responsibility, or accountability, or dependability.

Then there are others who use the past as pure experience. It could have been a good past or a bad one, but they have moved onto something substantial because they learned from it.

If I were to categorize people, I’d say that the majority of us deal with our pasts in one of 3 ways.
Some of us live in the past … that is, we are enamored with “the good old days.”

Our minds have filtered out the bad memories, and we spend our time remembering only the good things. We wish that our life today was like it was back then when things were simple and much less complicated.

The neighborhood was better back then … the country was better … the dollar was better … the church certainly was better. It’s dangerous to live in the past. The past will betray you.

A 2nd group lives with the past. These are people who have a heap of regrets. I’m sure that was true of Roy Riegals. His name probably isn’t familiar, but you’ve all heard his story.
He’s the football player who ran the wrong way for a touchdown in the Rose Bowl a number of years ago. Roy spends part of each day telling people how he felt the moment when he went from total joy to embarrassment. He lives with a past.

Some of us live with the past of a broken marriage, a colossal failure, a terrible mistake, a habit pattern which turned out to be humiliating. The past with which we live is ugly, a cesspool of memory; we shutter every time it gets stirred up.

A 3rd group of people live on the past. Having been successful yesterday, they try to stretch out the credit into today and tomorrow. They can’t! Yesterday’s successes were yesterday’s … they are not fuel for today.
Each day brings brand new challenges with potential for both success and failure. Living on the past prevents that.

Peter, the fisherman, is typical of people with a past. Luke recounts the story of Peter’s 1st significant meeting with Jesus.

Peter had been fishing all night, and when he came to shore in the early hours of the morning he was an exhausted loser. The fish weren’t biting. During the course of the next few moments, however, everything changed.

Jesus appeared … a crowd gathered … and Peter found his boat commandeered as a pulpit. He pushed out a few yards from the shoreline so Jesus could speak to the entire crowd.
When the sermon ended, Jesus told Peter to row further out into deep water where the nets could be let down.

Read Peter’s mind for an instant. “Lord, you may be an excellent preacher, but a fisherman, you’re not. The fish are not in the mood today. To let down my nets in front of my friends on the shore could be a humiliating experience.”

But Jesus persisted and the nets slid over the side. Instantly, they were so full that Luke says that they were about to break and the boat started to sink.

“When Simon Peter saw what had happened, he fell on his knees before Jesus and said, ‘Go away from me, Lord! I am a sinful man!’” In other words, “I have a past.”
Peter takes a look at the tremendous power and character quality of Jesus and makes a self-assessment. By contrast, he is empty, inept, ashamed. The past which he carries tells him he is no match for Jesus’ brand of commitment. Why even try? “Go away from me, Lord!”

Peter typifies the person whose past shackles them to the point that they agonizingly cry out, “what’s the use; I can’t change; I’m a born loser!” But what was Jesus’ response? “Don’t be afraid.” “I can handle your past.”

So, if Jesus could reverse the effects of Peter’s past, can He do it again today? There, I’ve asked the question for you. And it’s a question that almost everyone asks sooner or later. Think about all this “baggage” that we carry around.
There are resentments, habits, dead relationships, feelings of low self-esteem, guilt, and disappointments. There are weaknesses, embarrassments, and memories. They weigh us down as if we were carrying a piano on our backs. So what can we do with them?

Since Peter had some success in freeing himself of the weights of his past, let’s look at his counsel on the subject.

He writes, “Let us give thanks to the God … because of his great mercy he gave us new life … this fills us with a living hope.”

“New life” means that we are getting a totally new start. “A living hope” speaks of the future where life can become productive.
That’s what happened to him. When Peter started to follow Jesus, a process of change began to take place. It wasn’t immediate or dramatic; it just happened.

But it happened because Peter crossed a line and made a commitment to Jesus, the One who had told him not to be afraid. So he signed on with Jesus … past and all. And little by little the past melted away. How?

Peter says, “Have your minds ready for action. Keep alert and set your hope completely on the blessing which will be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

If we look at that verse carefully, we see that Peter is dealing with this on 3 levels: our mind, our instincts, and our spirit.
Change on just one of those levels is dangerous. Many of us are still carrying past failures around because we simply tried to fix them on an emotional level.

When Kathy and I 1st got married I became a “new man” overnight. The habits of the past changed so quickly even I was amazed. I was attentive; I was sensitive. “Wow!” I said to myself, “have I ever changed into something spectacular!”

But, it wasn’t long before I lapsed back into the more typical patterns. The old “me” was back again. What happened?

My conversion to the “perfect” husband was only a matter of enthusiasm, the level of feelings, emotions, instincts. I hadn’t really changed in the other 2 levels … the intellect and the spirit.
As the years have passed however, I’ve made changes on all 3 levels, and now my wife has a “perfect” husband. But it’s taken some time.

Christians have that same problem. Coming to faith in Jesus Christ and experiencing His acceptance brings an emotional high. There are some instant changes of behavior … but if it’s due only to emotions, it won’t last. It must be all 3.

Peter tells us, “have your minds ready for action” … be mentally prepared. That happens when we guard what’s allowed to occupy our brains … negative thoughts, trashy input, brooding on the past.

The other morning I found my mind settling in on some resentful thoughts about a person who had criticized me.
It was hard to gain control over my thought pattern until I began to deliberately sing, (actually some praise songs). In one sense, I was getting my mind “ready for action.”

“Keep alert” is taking control of your feelings, your drives, your instincts. They have to be brought under your personal management rather than allowing them to rule you.

Finally, “set your hope” is an exercise of the spirit. It believes that God has everything under control.

But Peter goes on with his personal suggestions about dealing with the past. “Be obedient to God, and do not allow your lives to be shaped by those desires you had when you were still ignorant.”
Something needs to change. Both Senators Obama and McCain are talking a lot about change. We need to spiritually change and get rid of the forces that are hostile to the purposes of God in our lives.

That’s Peter’s point, “be holy in all that you do, just as God who called you is holy.” In other words, change what’s going on in here so that you begin to think and act like God does. It’s changing things so that we become more like God and less like we were in the past.

And while some of this change may seem gradual to us, as far as Heaven is concerned the past leaves us immediately when we come to faith in Jesus.

In forgiveness, God elects never to hold our sins of the past against us.
Were we to find ourselves in His presence right now, we would stand there as sinless people.

So Peter suggests 4 things that have to happen in order for the past to be effectively dealt with.

Step #1 … “rid yourselves, then, of all evil; no more lying or hypocrisy or jealously or insulting language.” Wow, did you hear what he said? And remember, Peter is writing to Christians! Believers are doing this stuff. They need to make (some of us may need to make) some changes in verbal behavior.

“New beings” they were, but old habit patterns and memories still have to be changed. That is done by deliberately “ridding themselves … of all evil.”
Let me suggest a way to do that. Get a sheet of paper and list those things that bring out lying or hypocrisy or jealously or insulting language in you. Make a list of all your patterns of thought and behavior which are not of God. List them! Then each day review them, think about when and with whom that type of verbal response tends to crop up, and then ask God for the power to change … just for that one day.

I heard a pastor describe a page in his daily journal on which he listed the things of the past which threatened him. Each morning he read and pondered the list. Committing them to God, he prayed, “Lord, these are the pits I’m prone to stumble in; give me victory over them just for today.” And then at the end of the day he took inventory.
We could make some effective changes in our own lives by doing such a thing … “rid yourselves” of them.

Step #2 … “Be like newborn babies, always thirsty for the pure spiritual milk, so that by drinking it you may grow up.” If you are going to get rid of some things of the past, if you are going to clean out the crawl space of your life, you had better have “replacement furniture.”

Some of us are great on confession (step one), but short on acquisition (step 2). Peter says that we have to begin new habits, new thoughts, new activities … now!

Just like the 1st step … as I’m thinking about what I need to get rid of … I also need to consider how to mature in my relationship with the Lord.
I’ve found that one of the keys to being a loving husband is thinking each morning, “what can I do to express love to Kathy today?” Well, what can I do to grow in Christ today … to dull the past and brighten the present?

Step # 3 … “Come to the Lord, the living stone … come as living stones, and let yourselves be used in building the spiritual temple.” What Peter says here is obvious. We cannot effect change from the past without Christian fellowship.

One brick is useless until it is cemented together with other bricks and they become a beautiful and serviceable wall or structure. Change on all 3 levels is impossible until we interlock ourselves with other Christians, all of whom are in the struggle.
We encourage, exhort, bolster up, and love one another.

You cannot get enough religion to change you by sitting in a pew; you must provide yourself with Christian fellowship. Only then will the past begin to dissolve.

Step #4 … “But you are the chosen race, the King’s priests, the holy nation, God’s own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God … at one time you were not God’s people, but now you are his people; at one time you did not know God’s mercy, but now you have received his mercy.” Look at the underlined words.

They reaffirm what God has done for us. “But now” is simply accepting what God has done … living in the “but now.” Some would call this “a positive mindset.”
Call it what you wish … but do it. Constantly remind yourself, when the weight of the past presses in, of what God has made you. Reaffirm and thank Him for what you are in the “but now.”

When I was pastoring in Niagara Falls, a man began attending worship. I wanted to get to know him so I made arrangements to meet him for lunch at a restaurant just down from the church. It didn’t take long for him to share with me his feelings about his past. He was an angry, hurt, and bitter man.

“You know,” I said, “that all can change.” I began to tell him what we’ve been talking about this morning. “You can get rid of the effects of your past by coming to faith in Jesus and allowing Him to begin the process of change in you.”
I was amazed at his quickness to perceive, his hunger to respond. “Could I do it right now?” he asked. I inwardly gulped as I looked at the people standing all around us and thought of a waitress who would probably come at any moment to take our dessert order.

“Why not?” I said. He began to pray … out loud … unashamed. He poured out to God his feelings, his remorse, his embarrassment, his bitterness. God listened … and kept the waitress away from our table.

When he finished, I prayed and thanked God for my friend’s new life, his living hope. And when I said “Amen” I looked up into the smiling face of Jack Bateman, now a child of God with a dead past but a live future.
And I watched Jack pass through all 4 of Peter’s steps. Getting rid of things was desperately hard for him. But replacing the old followed right along … new family patterns, study, servanthood … it all happened. He surrounded himself with new Christian friends and they discipled him … then he discipled others.

And finally, Jack began to accept himself (step 4) as God accepted him. He was a man in his late 60’s who showed how the weight of the past can be discarded, and a living hope be realized. The past doesn’t need to be a battleground.

Yesterday is over; today and tomorrow are the only real issues. That’s what God wants you to experience.
 

MARANA THA