The past sure is tense, They’re heading up for the main event, All those people seem to be hell-bent…No you got the wrong idea, No you got the wrong intent…The past sure is now, I don’t see how… Don Van Vliet
Let us revisit the time of Abraham and dissect a story within the story. When Abraham and his nephew Lot settled in Canaan, (modern day Israel), their wealth and possessions grew so vast that they had to move a distance from each other to make room for them. Lot and his family moved to the city of Sodom (Gn. 13:1 – 13.).
Sodom and Gomorrah were cities thought to be near the Dead Sea. Except for Lot and his family, both cities were filled with unrepentant, sinful reprobates. Thus, God’s hand was forced to render His righteous judgment, in the form of total destruction of the cities and their inhabitants (Gn. 18:20, 21.).
However, God sent two angels (who appeared to be men), to Sodom, to deliver Lot. Lot encountered them in the town square and invited them to his house. Lot’s house was then immediately surrounded by all the men in Sodom, who told Lot to give the men up, so that they could force anal rape upon them (Gn. 19:1 – 5.).
The angels struck all the townsmen with blindness, (which undoubtedly revealed their nature to Lot). Then they told Lot to take his family (wife, 2 daughters and 2 sons-in-law) and run from Sodom immediately:
“Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed.” Gn. 19:17 NKJV
Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by the angels, who called down fire and brimstone upon them (Gn. 19:24). Lot and His family made their escape, but Lot’s wife turned around for one last look at the life that she left behind:
But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. Gn. 19:26 NKJV
A hard and poignant lesson. So much so, that Jesus used this event as a warning example for those who were not prepared to leave their worldly life behind for Him when He returns:
On that day, the one who is on the housetop and whose goods are in the house must not go down to take them out; and likewise the one who is in the field must not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Lk. 17:31, 32. NASB
When God presents you with His will for you, He expects you to act it out, instead of staying entrenched in the world:
“No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back [to the things left behind] is fit for the kingdom of God.” Lk. 9:62 AMP
It is about letting go of your past ways of thinking and acting. But releasing the past is not easy for anyone. So, let us discuss why that is, and then the title of this post and the verse underneath it will begin to make sense…
See my previous post Evolution of the Dark Mind for greater detail of the recap of it that I present here, which outlines how the devil-induced ego creates people who are trapped in their past. That lying voice in your head leads you down to a dark place where you come to believe you are inherently flawed. Not true.
In subsequent shame, you isolate yourself from yourself, others and even from God Himself.
Your life mirrors what is going on in your head, which is a whirl of frenetic thoughts that keep you running from reality. You wear yourself out and become violent.
The violence stems from your resistance against the world as you see it. In addition, you take on the role of a victim to relieve you from having to take responsibility for your life…
Okay. Let us press on. What we end up doing is living in suspended animation – in frozen time. That relentless mental chatter steals our present moments, by continually pummeling us with cerebral visions of our distorted Life Story, so that we cannot engage with the ‘now.’ We chase our own tails, reliving our past relentlessly, giving it a little more drama with each review.
That nasty little ego not only uses the past against us, it also dangles the hope of a better future in front of us – again, to keep us away from experiencing the present moment.
The only place that we can experience God is in present time.
Your only real and ongoing sin, is living in suffering and throwing your precious life away. Christ has already paid the price for the forgiveness of any transgression in your past and He is willing to help you retrieve your present:
“Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder the things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth… Is. 43:18, 19. NKJV
“I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins.” Is. 43:25 NKJV
For His sake. God wants to cherish you. He never intended for you to live a burdensome life, trapped in some illusory past. He knows that when you put your mind in front of your eyes, you can only show Him your back.
You know when you have chosen your past over God. It is revealed in your self-talk: ‘If only I would have done___.’ ‘If only I would have married___.’ ‘If only I wasn’t so___.’ ‘If only my parents weren’t so___.’ ‘If only, if only, if only…’
It is a conversation composed of a string of regrets – a flurry of thoughts telling you that you, someone else, or something else must change for you to be happy. And you run a similar narrative when you are daydreaming about the future: ‘If only I could be taller, richer, etc.’
What happens when you keep these conversations going in your head? Nothing happens! Life is only lived in the present moment. The Dark Mind doesn’t want you in present time because that represents change – an unpredictable sequence that it cannot control.
So, it keeps presenting your world as an ongoing stream of past events, all the while warning you, ‘What if this happens again?’ In other words, ego preserves its relevance by keeping you believing that your worst nightmare is lurking just around the corner.
And so, life never seems to be what we think it should be. We lay it out like a map, which we hope that if we live by it, those directions will keep out the pain of our past. But that ultimately keeps our focus on the very same pain. Instead of seeking God to help us ferret out the roots of our dissatisfaction with life, we change jobs, relationships, geography, or we immerse ourselves in meaningless distractions – remaining the author of our own vexation.
Amazingly, many will choose to suffer and keep their sad life because that is what they know, as well as the person they must be to live it. But that life continues to worsen, because the past is bottomless due to the continual embellishments that they add to their Life Story. It gives ego new nuances to beat them up with.
This is not living; it is dying unconsciously. We want to avoid that because the past sure is tense. We don’t want our past to be our ‘now.’ We want to keep it in past tense.
No one makes the conscious decision to be wounded. However, if we cling to that past, those wounds will continue to fester. Whatever happened in your past may or may not be your fault. The events may or may not have happened in the way that you remember them.
WHATEVER HAPPENED, IT DOESN’T MATTER! WHAT MATTERS IS THAT YOU LEARN FROM THEM AND MOVE ON.
You cannot get that time back, or undo what has transpired. Your responsibility is to let it go! It is time to seek God and let Him wake you up from your suspended animation, and fit you with a new timepiece:
But as for me, I trust in You O LORD; I say, “You are my God,” my times are in your hand… Ps. 31:14, 15. NKJV
…call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back from your captivity… Jer. 29:12 – 14. NKJV
Amen.
Goodnight and God bless.