Look forward not behind...

          For the past several days I have been battling with what to write for my next post. I was anxious because Christmas was coming and went and the New Year was fast approaching but I seemed to be getting no closer to writing anything. Different ideas floated through my mind, then seemed to float right back out. I felt like I was suffering from writer's block . . . and maybe I was. But finally I felt God whisper to me that it would come at the right time. And I relaxed.
            So, it's the first day of the new year, 2020. I awoke this morning and began my devotions and I found myself being thankful. I thank God for bringing me safely to a new day and a new year. I thank Him because if the devil's plan was to take me out before the new year, he had failed because I am still standing and alive and in my right mind. I could so easily look at all the things that had gone wrong or things that had brought fear and frustration and stress but at the end of the day I even thank God for ALL of those things because they ALL contributed to my personal development; they have helped me reach to where I am today. As I prayed for different people I realised that some of them were going through so much worse . . . and they too were still standing and in their right minds. 
            It can be so easy to look back over our lives and only see or rather choose to focus on the negative. That leads to self pity and the inability to move forward to the good things that God has in store for you. In Philippians 3:13-14 Paul the apostle says: "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, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."
            We need to plain and simply just "forget". One dictionary defines to "forget" as to "deliberately cease to think of." It must be intentional. It must be a conscious, deliberate action to forget those things in 2019 - and even before - that were negative, that drained your energy and resolve; to forget those things that were created and sent by the enemy to hinder you, destroy your hopes and dreams and even kill you. But it takes an even more conscious effort to look forward and to "press" and to strive and to grab on to the good things that God still has in store for you. Forget the negative of the past but don't forget the promises of God which are still yes and amen. God's promises to you have not and will not change. Whatever He doesn't give to you was never for you in the first place but what He has for you is even better.
            So I invite you to look forward to 2020 and beyond. God has not given up on you. God has not forgotten you, He has not deliberately ceased to think about you. His plans for you are still to prosper you not to harm you, to give you hope and a future.