God Promises Hope For Your Future Despite the Pain Of Your Past

God works all things together for good. You were created for a purpose.

God has a plan for your life.

Do you believe these promises or doubt them?

Do you find yourself doing both sometimes?

For many of us, we have been knocked down and for some we can get back up and continue to walk in confidence that God will see us through. For others it takes awhile.

We doubt our purpose. We doubt God’s plan for our life. Yet, over time we find this incredible strength in Him.

God wants to heal the pain of our pasts and use what we have experienced to pave the way to His plans for our future. It’s when we are in the midst of the pain when we ask God – why did this happen?

It’s in the moments that we draw near to Him, a love that surpasses all understanding, sweeping in and a redeeming love takes place.

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Why?

Because He knows our past and the pain of it leads us to His plans and our hope in Him for our future.

Some of you, like me, have been through the process. You know that your past does not define who you are today. It may be steps that define your future, but God’s grace has been sufficient.

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners - Isaiah 61:1

This verse is incredible in that we find four types of people God sent His Son Jesus for - the brokenhearted, the captive, the prisoner and the darkness.

(So here goes some honest moments)

What is your brokenhearted place? For me it was my family. I had so much hurt and hate in my heart as a young girl only to find myself broken wanting to remove myself from the world because life wasn’t worth living if I didn’t have a family that didn’t love me. I hated life. I hated me.

Webster’s dictionary defines captive as someone who has been taken prisoner. What is or was that thing that keeps you bound? Is it a secret you haven’t told your husband? Is it an addiction you can’t seem to quit? For me it was bad decisions in my past. Going through those brokenhearted places I found myself making decisions that weren’t nine times out of ten the right ones. Oh boy was the devil good at reminding me of that.

Maybe you are a prisoner in your own cell. I was a prisoner of failure. I hated to fail. I hated to lose. I grew up playing sports and there was nothing more than winning. Winning championships, winning the title, winning the position - failure was not an option. Then when you feel like you fail in this thing called marriage with one already failed, you are afraid to fail again. Or when you have children and you are afraid they might feel the same way you did growing up about you. You become a prisoner.

What about darkness? What kind of darkness are you living in? What secret are you hiding? Maybe like me you lived feeling dirty and ugly about yourself. Ashamed as a child because you had a secret that you could tell no one. It feels like a dark cloud over you and yet you’re scared to say anything because you’re afraid of what others might think.

I lived these for so long.

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God - Isaiah 61:2

But just like God remembered Noah, He remembered me (yet, I realized He never forgot me).

I picked myself up out of that pit of self-pity and began to proclaim the favor of God over my life.

You can begin to do the same.

You will begin to see that despite the circumstances, you believe and are confident in knowing that you are who God says you are. That His redeeming love removes all the lies, the bitterness and anger of the people or things that have hurt us. You begin to see what he talks about in the last part of verse 2 of how vengeance instead becomes a place where you look at the devil and say bring it. Let’s fight this fight because we already know who wins and with God on our side nothing is impossible.

What darkness or shame are you fighting? Have you talked to someone about it? I want to pray for you!