Putting the Past Behind Us

The future is not the only thing that keeps us from living in the present tense. For many, thinking about the past makes us just as anxious as worrying about the future. God redeems our past but He does not change it. God causes all things to work together for the believer’s good (Rom. 8:28). But this doesn’t mean that everything that has happened to us is good. It certainly doesn’t mean that everything we have done is good. For some, it is not a fear of the future but the recollection of the past that is the chief stumbling block in their life. We are living with what Martyn Lloyd-Jones calls “vain” regret. This is the condition of those whose past actions have crippled them in the present. “You cannot look back across your past life without seeing things to regret,” Lloyd-Jones warns. “That is as it should be; but it is just there that the subtlety of this condition comes in and we cross that fine line of distinction that lies between a legitimate regret and a wrong condition of misery and of deception.”