Made New....

This morning in my prayer time I was thinking about how much people struggle with their past and accepting the idea that God has forgiven it and they can actually move past it. As I was thinking about this I was thinking of how we live in a world that doesn't like to let our past go and maybe that is one reasons we struggle so much with this idea. As crazy as the examples might be, we truly do live in a world where if you have a rough past, your going to pay for it for a while in your future. For example, if you messed up your driving record with tickets, or worse, your going to pay a higher insurance for years to come. Your going to have to "prove" your a good driver again. If you messed up your credit, your going to have to either not get loans, or pay a higher interest rate for years to come, even if you now have the best paying job and pay every bill on time now. And in our human relationships, if you hurt someone and lose their trust, it's going to take a while to gain that trust back. This is the way we are programmed and it is the world we live in.
However, God doesn't fit in the same box as everything else. Unlike almost everything else in your life, God does not make you keep paying for your past once you have repented for it. He looks in our heart and the moment we confess our mistakes, ask for forgiveness and accept His grace and mercy, He puts our past behind us and will never remind us of it again. The enemy will try to, but what you must realize is that is NOT God...that is the enemy. God wants us to walk out of our past mistakes and into a future of hope. Other than the fact that this goes against most other things in this world, it is also difficult for us to do this because it requires us forgiving ourselves and realizing God wants to make us a new creature. And we can't drag our past along with us and be a new creature. New means new....new doesn't really mean somewhat improved or a little better than before or even new on the outside but still messed up on the inside....it just means NEW. To really put that into prospective think about Jesus giving His life for you. I would hope we all would agree that He did not do that just to "kind of improve things for us". He did it to give us a new life. So that means when we finally fall at His feet and accept that gift, we have to be willing to start a new life with Him.
Yes your past sins may have some earthly consequences that you're going to have to deal with for a while, but again that is not God. Those are just earthly consequences. Let God make all things new for you and stop letting the enemy replay the slide show of your past over and over in your mind each day. Christ's blood fully covered your past....believe that, walk in that and let other's see that. It is through our lives that other's who need Him will see the change that happened to you and want what you have.