Forgetting What Lies Behind

Have you ever been led to step out in faith and tackle a mission that God placed on your heart? Maybe the Lord asked you to witness to a friend or coworker. Perhaps He asked you to tell a relative about the love of Jesus, or maybe He asked you to surrender to the call to preach or become a missionary.

There are unlimited tasks that God could choose to place on our heart. Some believers will hear the Lord speak and tell them to go, and they will refuse to respond to His call. Some, however, will have the faith to believe that God can accomplish His will through them, and they will step out and say, “Here I am, Lord, send me.”

The first step in being used by God is to be willing, but many believers never make it to this point because Satan whispers in their ear telling them they can’t do it; that they are unable, that they’re not good enough, or that perhaps they don’t have enough experience to be used by the Lord.

When this happens, a believer will begin looking to himself instead of God. The individual will focus on his own inability and forget that the Lord is able to do what a person can’t do alone. Those who make it past discouragement and rely on God to accomplish what they can’t do by themselves, will follow the Lord where He leads them. However, Satan doesn’t give up harassing a person once he surrenders and obeys the Lord.

Allow me to provide an example from my own life. The Lord called me into ministry during my freshman year in college, but I didn’t know exactly to what area of ministry. Time and again, though, I was confronted with the question, “Are you going to be a preacher?” and I would reply that there was no way I would become a preacher. I knew that I didn’t have the ability to pastor a congregation.

One day during my freshman year in graduate school, I finally took that first step of faith and relied on God to do within me what I couldn’t do on my own; and I surrendered to the call to preach. We need to make certain that we never tell God that we’re not going to go to a certain place, or that we’re not going to do a specific task, because that could be the very thing He will make us do!

So, I made it beyond that initial step of faith, but then Satan began hitting me with something very painful, which was my past. First, I was attacked within my mind by being reminded of past failures, and as I recalled how I was a shy person back in high school and college.

I was not only attacked within my mind, but I experienced criticism from without. It hurts when we realize our own failures; but when other people, such as family and friends, point them out it can be debilitating. And that’s exactly what the devil wants to do to God’s people; he wants to cripple them so they can no longer be effective for the Lord.

In our message this morning we will look at how Satan tries to hinder God’s people from serving the Lord by holding their past over them. We will also see how the apostle Paul was able to overcome whenever people held the past over him, and when they accused him of not following God.

It is my hope that this message will help us find the strength and courage to press onward into victory and freedom in God’s grace through Jesus Christ.

The Past Can Hinder Our Usefulness (Matthew 13:54-58)

When I was in junior high I carried my books to class in a brief case. This was considered an uncool thing to do, and I received ridicule and was labeled a nerd. About fifteen years later, after college and graduate school, I returned home one weekend to visit my parents. I stopped at a gas station to fill up, and while standing at the pump a truck drove by and someone rolled down the window and yelled out, “Hey brief case!” In one’s hometown it’s nearly impossible to reverse a label, and Jesus experienced this firsthand:

When He had come to His own country, He taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, “Where did this Man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary? And His brothers James, Joses, Simon, and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us? Where then did this Man get all these things?”

So they were offended at Him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house.” Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief (Matthew 13:54-58).