So tonight I worked out for the first time in ages. I started with a Billy Banks cardio workout, progressed to part of a Leslie Sansone 3 mile walk, and ended by doing random exercises to iTunes music. I managed to touch my toes for the first time in years, and I'm pretty sure I pulled a tendon or something in the process. My leg is now a quivering blob of jelly. After I had almost suffocated myself with exercise, I stopped...and ate an ice cream cone. I'm pretty sure that I still burned more calories than I ate, but it kind of seemed like I was canceling out all my hard work. Fortunately, ice cream is a great remedy for guilt. :)
But how many times do we do things like that in our lives? In our walk with God? In our relationships? In our work? We work so hard to achieve something and to reach a goal, then in the next minute we are forgetting about all that work and doing something that seems to cancel it all out. We get stuck in that same rut, spinning our wheels, and a multitude of other old adages that mean the same thing. Meanwhile, we could be moving forward.
I think that most of the time though, it's not that mistake or that slip up that keeps us from moving forward, but rather our own guilt. I ate an ice cream cone after I exercised, I'll eat an ice cream cone every time I exercise, I might as well not even bother to exercise in the first place. Or, I yelled at my friend over something stupid, I'll always do that, so I shouldn't be friends with them anyway.
But the past does not determine the future! We are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. We are able to overcome the past mistakes and the past failures and move forward in Him. Don't give up on something worthwhile because you slipped up. Anything that's worth having, worth doing, worth achieving is going to be hard. If it were easy to exercise every day, then we wouldn't receive any benefit from the exercise. And everyone would be healthy and ice cream would cease to exist...and that would NOT be a good thing.
Just because you don't get something right on the first try does not mean that you should give up on it! (Unless, of course, it's skydiving. Then it would be a pretty good idea to give up if you fail the first time. And somehow manage to survive.) Living for God is not always easy, and I make mistakes. But that doesn't stop me from getting back up and pressing forward. Philippians 3:14 says "I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." But if you look back in verse 13, it 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!"
Past defeats should not affect our race! If God can forgive and forget our past, who are we to hold on to it? I think in the end it comes down to human nature-we don't want to be wrong. We don't want to make mistakes and risk being ridiculed or punished. So, we just avoid situations where we might make mistakes. But when we can learn to just move past our mistakes instead of trying to find a way around them, it becomes so much easier to move forward. After all, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. :)
So let's move forward together. Forget about the mistakes of the past and press toward the mark, whatever that mark is for you.
Now, I think I hear some more ice cream calling me...I think I need to get rid of some more guilt. :)
