One bad decision in our past has the potential to reach into our present and hijack it, thus sabotaging our future.
What happens is this: We replay over and over in our minds the injustice that took place against us, or we replay what we did to hurt someone. And the more we replay these past hurts, the more these past hurts hurt us in the present.
A wife may not fully give herself to her husband because of past hurts from her high school days.
An adult who was adopted may suffer from abandonment and rejection issues because of the past hurt of not knowing the birth parents. They can’t have intimate relationships because of the past pain.
Or a man like me deals with feelings of inadequacy because of my past pains of not having a father and of being a compulsive stutterer who was ruthlessly made fun of because of my speech problems.
Even though the event that hurt us was in the past, it continues to hurt in the present.
The sin that produced the guilt reaches into the present and still hurts us.
And hurt people hurt people.
So what do we do?
Instead of focusing on the pains of our past, we must focus on the pain of Jesus’ past.
In the past, Jesus was greatly wounded for our pains and actually became our sins and the sins committed against us.
Let His pain reach into our present and heal us.
He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at Him and people turned away. We looked down on Him, thought He was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains He carried—our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought He brought it on Himself, that God was punishing Him for His own failures. But it was our sins that did that to Him, that ripped and tore and crushed Him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through His bruises we get healed. We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And GOD has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on Him, on Him.
Still, it’s what GOD had in mind all along, to crush Him with pain. The plan was that He give Himself as an offering for sin so that He’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life. And GOD’s plan will deeply prosper through Him. Isaiah 53:3-6, 10 (MSG)
