Maturity Looks Ahead

How many minutes, hours, or days have I spent thinking about the past? "Man wasn't that a great time..." or "If only I hadn't have done xyz I could be so much further along..." The past, your successes and failures, is always a chain to your future. You can learn from the past failures, even use them as examples of what not to do, or repeat. You can learn from the past successes and implement those tools, trades, or abilities to succeed again. Much of what we do is built experience by experience. However sometimes there is a danger in the past. It becomes a hindrance when you are tempted to spend time reviewing the past so much that you are then replaying it. Images, videos and audio in the mind, replaying what you did or didn't do. The glory days as on the football team, or the low days on the streets.


Philippians 3:13-15 (ESV)(emphasis added)
Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But ONE THING I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ (The Anointed One and His Anointing) Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. 


I must learn to apply pressure to my future. Change requires change. Pastor Art Aragon says that "change requires change, if you want to change you have to change or it wouldn't be change." You can't do that same thing over and over expecting different results, that's insanity. Many times the problems of life attempt to apply pressure on us. Mark 4 talks about them choking the Word in us. To choke something is to apply pressure until it dies by suffocation. So in order to remove myself from the pressure of life I must begin to apply pressure to my future instead; to push back against the pressure pressing me. 


I apply pressure to my future by engaging my dreams daily. As I enter into the secret place of the Most High, He begins to speak to me. He tells me things about himself, and about my future and about my present. He gives me insights, ideas, and witty inventions. He gives the ability to see something no one else sees, or in a way no one else sees it. There are unique things I was called to do on this planet, in this life. He called me to do these things before the earth was created! My time in the presence of God, in prayer and study and meditation of His Word brings me to a place that I can hear him and walk it out.   



However, if I gain a grand revelation and forget about it by noon and then don't do anything about it again for three years... it will have profited me nothing. Faith without works is dead. So then what must I do to work things out that I hear from Him? Especially, what do I do when the dream or vision of a project or calling is so big that I can't begin to fathom how He could ever bring that to pass in my life? How does the person flipping burgers having visions from God of a multi-million dollar business begin? 


But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it. I must meditate on the Word of God day and night that I may do it, not just the bible which is of course the HIGHEST authority and must never be contradicted, but also the word I hear from Him in prayer. 


This can be done many ways, it can be done by taking a picture that reminds me of that calling/mission/vision and post it on the wall, door, etc. Every time I see it I can thank God for bringing it to pass in His timing. But whatever the tool, the principle is the same. Keep it before me, meditate it, keep it in my mouth, which brings it into the heart, which comes back out as Faith. Speak to the mountain, daily. I must begin to use my imagination to work for me and not against me. I must imagine days of too much blessing, instead of days of not enough. I, and I alone, must be responsible for my future, through Him who called. He will do the work, if I will do the believing. That is my work. My work is to do all I can to build my believer muscle until I can't believe anything else but that which he has called me to. The work of the believer is to enter into the rest. It's a heart AND mind matter. Selah...Pause and think about it, meditate it, ponder it...






DW


Hebrews 4:11 NKJV

Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.

Hebrews 4:3 NKJV

For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said: "So I swore in My wrath, 'They shall not enter My rest,' " although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.

• John 17:24 NKJV

  Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.
  Read John 17

• Ephesians 1:4 NKJV

  just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,
  Read Ephesians 1

• 1 Peter 1:20 NKJV

  He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you
  
  
  
  

  Jeremiah 1:5 NKJV

  
  

  "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before youwere born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations."

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Romans 11:29 NKJV

  
  

  For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Ephesians 1:18 NKJV

  
  

  the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,

  
  

  
  

  2 Timothy 1:9 NKJV

  
  

  who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began,