Love: Timeless Motivation

Do not lie in wait, O wicked man, against the dwelling of the righteous; do not plunder his resting place; for a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity. 

Proverbs 24:15-16

Just because you failed to do something before doesn’t mean you should forgo doing it now.

You may have fallen down before, but get up like you never hit the floor. As you get up and move on from your past failure, the better chance you will have of not falling again. The more you think about your failures and worry about them, the more likely you are to repeat them. You can respond to your failures without worrying about them.

We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. 

2 Corinthians 4:8-10 

If a righteous person has been plundered by the wicked, he will be prepared against a future attack. A wicked man will accept the loss and will seek to replace the material with other stolen goods. You bring your experiences forward with you. Your past failures, oppressions, and persecutions shape who you are and how you naturally react, but they don’t have to shape your future. You choose how you will respond to your past, living in fear that it will happen again or accepting that it happened, taking precautions so that it won’t happen again, and moving on.

Forgiveness changes the present not the past.

No one can change the past. When you forgive others for what they may have done to you and move on from how you may have failed, you are able to live free in the present. Instead of hanging on to the past or grasping at the future, living moment by moment gives you the freedom to live by humility and kindness with forgiveness and contentment.

Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. Colossians 3:12-14

Just as God lives outside of time, you are able to live outside of time when you live by forgiveness. When you live by forgiveness, you are freed from the control of the past and the concern of the future. You live each moment as a gift from God that you are able to use.

Pain drives you, but love drives you stronger.

Many pains can drive you in life—past pain, present discomforts and the fear of future pain—but love drives you by the power of free choice. Ignoring the past doesn’t free you from the conditions the past has caused, but you choose how you are going to live the now in response to the then. Living by forgiveness allows you to remove the chains of the past and walk into the future with freedom. Don’t let past failures prevent you from pursuing what you should do to be conformed to the image of Christ.