Call to Prayer
I realize, when I bring up the subject of the past, I have no
real idea what populates that period of time for you. I hope
you’ve seen, as I’ve talked about the height and depth of
God’s love and grace (a phrase that comes from Ephesians
3:16–19) that I’m not minimizing what’s back there—the extent
of what you’ve done or what’s been done to you. But the devil
wants you to think that your past is worse than everybody
else’s. Or he wants to suggest to you that, given your religious
background and what you profess to be in public, your past
sins (though perhaps not the shocking, scandalous type) still
disqualify you from parading around all Christian-like.
Look, here’s the truth: There’s not one of us—not one—
who can’t stare back into our past and wish a hundred times
we’d done a hundred things differently. And the reason it’s
only a hundred today is probably just because our memory
isn’t what it used to be. Not to mention, despite our best
efforts, we keep feeding our enemy new clips of failure to
choose from and compile. And as soon as they fade into the
past, he fires up the projector and invites himself over for
popcorn, to make sure we’re seeing how bad it is and how bad
we are.