If you could change something about yourself, what would it be?

Your hair?

Your weight?

Your occupation?

I’m sure there is a list as long as your arm of things you would like to change.

What about your past?

How many times have we laid in bed at night and thought about a mistake we made when we were younger or the thoughtless, hurtful thing we said to a person that we don’t talk to anymore. Unless a man in a blue Police Box shows up and offers us to travel through time, the things that are in our past will remain there. The memories will not change. The consequences will remain. So what can we do?

I take solace in the words Paul wrote, “Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead. I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13, 14

Talk about someone that would like to change his past, Paul is the perfect candidate! This is the same man that consented to the murder of Stephen (Acts 8:1) and made havoc of the church, putting men and women in prison to eventually be executed (Acts 8:3). He had every reason to want to change his past, to forget the screams of those that died for their faith in Jesus, the faith that he now shares. The only thing Paul could do WAS to press forward!

Heaven is real. God has prepared for us a place, a “goal for the prize” as Paul stated, that will be far beyond anything thing we’ve been through on this earth. As a matter of fact, Heaven is a place without pain, sorrow or tears (Revelation 21:4)! Who wouldn’t want to be there?

I can’t change my past, but I can change my present to affect my future! Let’s press toward the goal and forget those things in the past!

By: Justin Odom