Don't Forget To Forget Your Past Series

Watch Night Message 2004

Don’t Forget to Forget You Past

Will You Carry Your Old Mess Into the New Year? Or Will There Be A New Beginning?

Introduction: Church, are you ready for the New Year?

- Are you ready for a fresh new start?

- Are you ready to soar with the eagles?

- Are you ready for a paradigm shift from ordinary to the extraordinary? - - Are you ready to go after God with all of your might?

If you are, get ready! For God’s time has come! The Apostle Paul to the Church at Philippi proclaimed in….

Philippians chaper 3, verses 12-14, "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. (13) Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, (14) I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

Sermon: Here we are this night on the threshold of a brand new year! A time to start again! Not with the same old, same old, but with a fresh new thing! I pray everyone here are resolved to put the old behind them to pursue the higher things of God. So I came to tell you that if you want a new beginning that is blessed,

This same Paul told the Corinthians, "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal" – 2 Corinthians 4:18.

In other words, temporary things have no eternal value and cannot be depended on to attain God’s highest calling on our lives. Knowing this I’d say that it is time to lay up treasures in heaven and watch God turn a profit for us!

A New Year means "a new beginning," a fresh start. A new beginning means just what it says "a new beginning" and that means all of the messed up things that hindered, hampered and held us back must be declared null and void and left behind in the old year.

Having said all of that, here is my exhortation to you: "don’t forget to forget your past and be sure to leave the old year’s mess in the old year and usher in the New Year with a fresh new beginning, a new beginning for walking in victory and seeking after the higher things of God!" Don’t forget to forget your past!

It’s Time to Count It All Lost for Christ!

Back in verse 8 is written, "Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ."

Here in these verses the Apostle Paul resolved to abandon completely his past life for a brand new life in Jesus Christ. Paul had many wonderful achievements. He was truly somebody in society! He had been there, done that and had many trophies to show off for his many accomplishments. He was well educated, well respected and wealthy. But in retrospect, Paul saw all that which was of his old life as garbage, not as ordinary garbage, but garbage of the worst kind.

When Paul came to know Christ

- he threw out all of his trophies earned while in the flesh under the law.

- He destroyed all of his old manuscripts!

- He belittled his old reputation!

- He abandoned old friends who became his foes.

But Paul did not allow any of that to worry him. For He was aiming for something much greater, more enduring and of an eternal value. He called it "the Prize of a Higher Calling of God in Christ Jesus."

As the New Year ushers in, what will you count lost before it rings in? Will the two tons of old garbage you’ve been hauling around all this year become the same two tons of garbage that will you continue to hall around in the coming year? Or will you forget your pass and press forward?

What about your old attitude of jealousy, anger, slothfulness, procrastination, stubbornness and disobedience? Will you continue to hall all of the weight of those things into the new year, or will you become that new creation that you bragged you had become that never manifested in this year?

Paul proclaimed, "But indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." There are two keys to putting the past behind you. We find these in two major expression that Paul used and they are: (1) "count old things lost for the excellency of Christ," and (2) "Forgetting the things of the past."