Satan would like to keep you looking at where you’ve been rather than where you are going. He wants you to focus on your past. All the mistakes you’ve made. All the failures you’ve experienced. All the people who let you down. If he can keep you looking backwards, he’ll slow your progress moving forward.
When you look behind you, it slows you down.
Ask anyone who is a runner. When you look behind you, it slows you down.
It’s the same in your spiritual life. God wants you to learn from yesterday, but He doesn’t want you to live in it. The way to pursue your spiritual maturity is through keeping your eyes on where Jesus wants you to go. You are called, as Paul wrote, to “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14).
I like to encourage people to look at yesterday like a rearview mirror, which you would peek into every once in a while. But you should live your life like the way you drive your car. You don’t drive with your eyes fixated on the rearview mirror. You drive looking through the windshield. You focus on where you are going and don’t waste time staring at where you’ve been.
You should live your life like the way you drive your car.
When you live in pursuit of Jesus Christ and His will for your life, you will discover the purpose you are designed to live out. You have a purpose. God has a plan. He is not finished with you yet. But the longer you remain chained to yesterday, the more time you are losing in pursuing God’s plan for your life today.
So, as they say in the military, “Eyes front!”
