Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer by Priscilla Shirer

Author:Priscilla Shirer [Shirer, Priscilla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION/Christian Life/Prayer
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Published: 2015-07-05T07:00:00+00:00

Strategy 5

Your Past

Ending the Reign of Guilt, Shame, and Regret

If I were your enemy, I’d constantly remind you of your past mistakes and poor choices. I’d want to keep you burdened by shame and guilt, in hopes that you’ll feel incapacitated by your many failings and see no point in even trying again. I’d work to convince you that you’ve had your chance and blown it—that your God may be able to forgive some people for some things, but not you . . . not for this.

It’s awful. And it’s personal.

A personal, unwelcome, unwarranted attack.

Using your forgiven past to poke holes in your future.

But that’s exactly what the enemy does. He absolutely loves living in the past.

In your past. In my past.

And why not? Some of his best opportunities to sabotage our potential comes from there.

He carefully archives footage from our history so he can pull from those files and remind us what our days of defeat, sin, and failure looked like. You’ve seen them, same as I have, a million times. If your life is anything like mine, I’d imagine he’s turned every room in the house into a screening room at one time or another, popping one of his old favorites into the player—for his amusement, for our humiliating shame and embarrassment.

It’s a painful thing to watch. Even in reruns. Especially in reruns . . . because every time he cues it up again, it’s with the fresh intent of mocking and maligning us, making us feel as unforgiven and unforgiveable as possible, and then even pointing the finger at all the other people who are more to blame, more at fault, than we should ever consider ourselves to be. If he can’t make us feel judged, he’ll try turning us into judges. So it’s quite a show he puts on. And quite depressing. Mostly because, as he loves reminding us, we’re the ones who’ve given him so much material to work with.

Under more constructive circumstances we might actually be able to learn from it—see another option we could’ve taken to avoid what ultimately happened, in order to not be so rash or gullible next time. We might be able to teach from it—help steer others who might one day face the same set of choices (our children, for example) toward an alternate ending that’s likely to result in something more favorable for them. But in the hands of the enemy, it’s always a horror film—run from it, hide from it—keep living and reliving it, over and over again. With no resolution, just a persistent dread and heartache. Never out of range from his cackling, accusing reappearance. Always at risk of having it jump up and scare us, just when we thought we and God had finally settled it for good.

And that’s how, instead of living with assurance, we become bombarded with shame. Instead of celebrating God’s grace, we feel undercut by continual guilt over the same old things. Instead of experiencing the ongoing, residual blessings of being regenerated by His Spirit—all things new—we’re caught in the spin cycle of ceaseless regrets.

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