It’s easy to go through life focused on what didn’t work out, who hurt us, or the mistakes we’ve made. “If only I would have finished college. If only I would have spent more time with my children. If only that company wouldn’t have laid me off after 20 years. That’s just not right.”
As long as you’re living in regret, focused on the negative things of the past, it’s going to keep you from the bright future God has in store. You’ve got to let go of what didn’t work out. Let go of the hurts and pain. Let go of your disappointments and failures. You can’t do anything about the past, but you can do something about right now. Whether it happened 20 years ago or 20 minutes ago, let it go and move forward. If you keep bringing negative baggage from yesterday into today, it will poison your future. You may have had an unfair past, but you don’t have to have an unfair future. You may have gotten off to a rough start in life, but it’s not how you start that matters. It’s how you finish.
What’s happened in your past is not nearly as important as what is in your future. Where you’re going is much more significant than where you’ve been. But if you stay focused on the past, you’ll get stuck where you are. This is the reason a lot of people don’t have joy or enthusiasm for life. They’re dragging around all of this negative baggage from the past. Somebody offended them last week, and they’ve got that stuffed in their resentment bag. Last month, they lost their temper and said some things they shouldn’t have. They’ve got that in their guilt and condemnation bag. Ten years ago, they lost a loved one. They still don’t understand it. They’ve got that hurt and pain in their disappointment bag. They carry around their bag of regrets, all the things they wished they would have done differently.
Life is too short to live that way. Learn to travel light. Every morning when you first get up, forgive the people that did you wrong the day before. Forgive your spouse for what they said. At the start of the day, let go of the disappointments, the setbacks from yesterday. Start every morning fresh and new. God did not create you to carry around all that baggage. Let it go and move forward in the life of blessing He has in store for you!
Every person, no matter how much faith they have or how good they are, will face disappointments. It may be something simple like not getting a promotion you hoped for, or not closing a business deal you worked so hard on. Maybe you didn’t qualify for a house you really wanted, or maybe something more serious happened like a relationship not working out, the death of a loved one, or some kind of illness in your body. Whatever it may be, the reality is that we’re all going to suffer some setbacks. No matter what has happened, one of the main keys to overcoming disappointments is learning to let go of the past.
If you feel “stuck” today, you may want to examine what you’re holding on to. Be willing let go of past disappointments by choosing forgiveness. Who hurt you? Who wronged you? Release it to God. Do you need to forgive yourself? Do you need to receive God’s forgiveness? Let go of the past so you can overcome disappointments and experience the bright future God has in store for you! There is freedom in forgetting!
