“Don’t Look Back”
December 28, 2025, CCCAG
Scriptures Psalm 77:11–14; Deuteronomy 8:2; Lamentations 3:21–23
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INTRODUCTION:
For me, 2025 was the epitome of an old Chinese saying- “May you live in interesting times”
What sounds like a blessing to our ears is actually a curse. It’s basically saying “May your life be filled with trouble, hardship, and difficulty.”
That’s been 2025 for many of us.
My year started out with a lot of stress as workers comp delayed my case after I had an obvious work place injury with my shoulder, and I spent a few months without any income.
Then a surgery
Then a recovery. Some light duty, then a switch to being a hospice nurse.
Lasted a few months, then switched back to ER nursing- the closest thing I could get to my first love- being a paramedic.
Had a large struggle adapting to being an ER nurse in a major trauma center- it’s a very different beast than what I was used to.
Now, reinjured the shoulder….let those games begin again with workers comp.
In national news-
We saw a newly elected president implement radical policies- and when I say radical, I’m not referring to a political ideology, but to the scope of what he is doing.
We see an uneasy peace in Gaza, but the Russia/Ukraine war rages on.
We also saw an assassination of a major conservative icon, Charlie Kirk.
Those are just a few random stories I picked.
Friends, today is the last Sunday of 2025.
This is the time of year where we naturally want to look back and are tempted to make a decision.
Some of you will slam the door on this year and never look back.
Others are holding onto moments from 2025, perhaps because of significant events that occurred in your life, good or bad.
Or maybe this last year was awesome for you, and you cling to moments that were filled with blessing, moments of healing, moments of grace.
Most of us? We’re somewhere in the middle — carrying joy in one hand and heartache in the other.
There is a powerful truth in the scripture that teaches us-
God never commands His people to rush past a season without remembering it.
In fact, the bible shows us that remembering is an act of worship.
We are going to be seeing that today as we look at several scriptures and we will see three examples of this truth.
Because the Bible teaches us that you can’t step confidently into tomorrow if you don’t first look back and see God in your yesterday.
So before we step into 2026, we’re going to do something holy:
We’re going to see how we view the past through God’s eyes, not our own.
Let’s go to Psalm 77.
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1. REMEMBERING GOD’S WORK: “I WILL RECALL YOUR WONDERS” (Psalm 77:11)
“I will remember the deeds of the LORD;
yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.”
Before we pray, I’ll note that The psalmist doesn’t say,
“I will remember MY accomplishments.”
He doesn’t say,
“I will remember the things I did right.”
He says:
“I will remember the deeds of the LORD.”
With that in mind, let’s pray
Prayer
There is something that is precious when we remember the past and see where God’s blessings shined through.
Because when you review a year without the lens of God’s activity, you will always distort reality.
You’ll either:
Beat yourself up
Inflate your ego
Collapse into discouragement
Or miss the quiet miracles that held you together.
That’s the danger of the attitude of “Don’t Look Back”, the title of today’s message.
For me
I am constantly looking back, reevaluating, remembering times when it seemed like something was overwhelming. Times where it seemed like God had backed away, and I was floundering in the middle of the ocean in a hurricane.
Times when paychecks didn’t come (>100 days)
Times when I was hurt
Times when I was disabled
Times when I couldn’t even function as an adult and was dependent on Tammie for everything.
But when I look back, and ask God-
“God, show me what YOU were doing in all of this,”
everything begins to shift.
Do that this morning-
Take a moment, and think about this last year, and look back and ask God-
Show me how you carried me when I didn’t have strength?
Show me how you held something together that should have fallen apart?
Show me how you healed something I thought was permanent?
Again, Look back- see how God might have-
Restored a relationship?
Protected you?
Provide in a way you didn’t expect?
Some of you survived things this year that nobody knows about.
Some of you walked through storms that should have drowned you — but God’s strength and grace kept your head above water.
Maybe….
Some of you didn’t get the miracle you were praying for…
but God sustained you in the waiting.
And sustaining grace is still a miracle.
My friends, if you’re here today, breathing, worshiping, standing in the presence of God — you are standing in the evidence of His faithfulness.
Let’s turn to Deuteronomy for another side of this-
2GOD USES THE WILDERNESS YEARS (Deuteronomy 8:2)
DDeuteronomy 8:2 says:
“Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart…”
There is a saying that has been making the rounds on social media, and it has a lot of truth behind it-
“Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create hard times.”
History is cyclical that way, or as Solomon says, “There is nothing new under the sun, what was, will be again.”
I know it’s been a repeating theme lately, but:
God uses hard years more often than He uses easy ones. (pause)
For Israel, the wilderness wasn’t so much a punishment — it was preparation.
Moses left Egypt with millions of former slaves.
No matter how hard he tried, No matter the miracles they saw, no matter being able to see a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night,
Israel of that time would always have that slave mentality, and you saw it every single time they were faced with hardship.
The answer of the people during the hard times was always-
Give up, go back.
Here is the problem-
That mindset will not work in God’s promised land.
There were giants that Israel had to face, and millions of people with that kind of defeatist mindset would never stand.
So over the course of the next 40 years, God let that slave mindset die off while the influence of men like Caleb or Joshua reshaped the attitude of the people and infuse the nation with a sense of manifest destiny-
that the promised land was there’s already, all they had to do is what God told them to do, when He told them to do it, and every enemy would fall before them.
Sometimes God has to allow time + hardship to kill off a bad attitude or mindset inside us.
And maybe 2025 felt like your own wilderness:
Financial uncertainty
Health battles
Family strain
Loss
Some type of painful Transition
Prayers that seemed unanswered
Nights where fear outweighed peace
But wilderness seasons reveal things success never can.
Wilderness seasons teach you:
Who you really trust
How deep your faith goes
How strong your reliance on God actually is
What idols you need to lay down
What promises you need to stand on
What character He’s forming in you
And here is the hard truth-
Nobody wants a wilderness.
But every believer, every future soldier of the cross needs one.
Wilderness years strip away self-confidence…
…but they grow God-confidence.
Wilderness years expose spiritual immaturity…
…but they produce spiritual depth.
Wilderness years take away the illusion of control…
…but they give you the reality of God’s sovereignty.
Some of the greatest growth in your life this year came from the hardest days.
You may not have recognized it in the moment — but looking back, you can see it now.
I’ve shared before that I’m very introverted, and with that comes a very retrospective mindset.
I replay conversations that didn’t go well- trying to figure out how I could have expressed myself better.
I’m brutally hard on myself when it comes to a clinical issue I didn’t know or recognize right away.
It also applies spiritually- how did my reaction to whatever situation either reflect Jesus Christ, or point people away from Christ or worse toward me?
Some healthy questions we can all ask ourselves.
For me, it’s helped me to see-
3. SEEING GOD IN THE DARK MOMENTS
One of the authors of the book of Psalms, Asaph recorded some thoughts in Psalm 77 that shows that he wasn’t remembering from a mountaintop.
He was remembering from a pit.
He said earlier in the chapter:
2b-“My soul refused to be comforted.”
Vs 8- “Has His unfailing love vanished?”
Vs 9“Has God forgotten to be merciful?”
He wrote this psalm from what St. John of the Cross called, a dark night of the soul.
Have you ever been in that place this year?
Even in this darkness, Asaph was able to close his eyes, focus on God, and write in verse 11:
“Then I will remember the deeds of THE LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago
If we can do as he did, everything changes.
Because your thoughts shape your faith.
Your memories shape your expectations.
Your reflections shape your hope.
It shows us that there are two ways to interpret a difficult year:
You can say:
“Look what happened to me.”
Or you can say:
“Look what God brought me through.”
That one shift changes everything.
Some of you are alive today because the Holy Spirit carried you when you were too tired to carry yourself.
Some of you kept your sanity because God held your mind together.
Some of you were spared from situations you didn’t even know were dangerous.
You survived heartbreak.
You survived fear.
You survived uncertainty.
You survived attacks — spiritual and emotional.
Looking back reveals the quiet mercies of God that were holding you every single day.
And that made all the difference in your lives.
Another benefit we when we slow down and remember The LORD-
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4. GOD’S MERCIES RESET WITH EACH NEW SEASON (Lamentations 3:21–23)
We turn to Lamentations.
The scene is the Prophet Jeremiah watching Jerusalem burn…
But that is abstract for most people. Think instead how you would feel watching Washington DC destroyed and in flames.
But in the middle of that gut wrenching grief that Jeremiah has, he is still able to say
3:21 “This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed…
His mercies are new every morning. Great is YOUR faithfulness oh God!
The LORD GOD is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in HIM!”
Jeremiah practiced the discipline of remembering the LORD, no matter what situation he found himself.
Here are the points for us to consider-
If His mercies reset every morning,
then His mercies also reset every year.
Too many times, we think about the end of a year as a tombstone.
It’s not, instead think of it as a threshold.
Thursday — and the year to come — is not recycled grace.
(pause)
It’s new grace.
Fresh mercy.
A clean start.
So don’t step into 2026 dragging your past behind you like a chain.
Choose to step into it with what God is offering you this morning-
New mercy
New strength
New clarity
New opportunities
New direction
New hope in the same God that carried you through 2025 is already waiting for you in 2026.
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5. WHAT DO WE DO WITH A YEAR LIKE THIS? (don’t verbalize this)
Scripture never says, “Forget the past.”
It says:
Remember what God did.
Too many times, we focus only on the bad, but that’s a trap, because if we did with an open heart, soul, and mind:
We’d see God’s incredible mercy shown to use in ways we couldn’t understand at the time, but now see it clearly.
This enables us to release what needs to be released.
There are weights you carried in 2025 that have to be left there, so they don’t’ weight you down as you walk into 2026.
It also reaffirms who you trust and put your trust in as you live life.
Many of the hard times of 2025 came from people failing you, or you failing people. It’s hard, but ultimately, we need to keep our eyes on a person who has never and will never fail us-
Jesus, HIS presence, HIS Power, and HIS provision.
If we can do that, we walk into 2026 with a new mission, purpose, and strength to live for God.
The title of today’s message was “Don’t look back”
It seems to be the opposite of what we are talking about, but here is the point-
Don’t let all the garbage of this year, affect how you run your race next year.
Runners in a race never look behind them- they are singularly focused on one thing- the finish line.
So don’t look back to the mistakes, the drama or the trauma
Look forward- and see the arms of Christ waiting to embrace you as you cross the finish line.
To help you with that, as we prepare to close, here are a few things to carry into 2026:
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A. Gratitude for His faithfulness
Even in the wilderness.
Even in the confusion.
Even in the unanswered parts.
Gratitude is a weapon.
With it, you can break ungratefulness, hopelessness, and spiritual paralysis.
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B. Humility about our limits
You are not God. You can’t control most of what life throws you way.
You were not meant to hold the world together.
So let this year remind you that you are dependent — and that dependence is holy.
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C. Expectation for His future grace
God is not done writing your story.
Conversely,
Not one chapter in 2025 was wasted.
Even the ones you hated.
He is preparing something.
He is shaping something.
He is building something.
And remember this- the wilderness always ends with a Promised Land.
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CONCLUSION- All Rise
Church, as we close this year, don’t walk out those doors thinking about everything that went wrong.
Walk out remembering everything God made right.
You’re standing in the evidence of His faithfulness.
You’re breathing proof that He sustains.
You’re living testimony that God finishes what He starts.
Now lift your eyes…
Because the same God who walked with you through this year
will walk with you into the next one.
Great is His faithfulness.
Great is His mercy.
And great is the hope that waits for us in 2026.
Prayer
