EDITORIAL

Hello dear readers, you are welcome to another session of impartation through live-giving words. By now, I do believe that you know that those of us in this generation are a set of peculiar people, a set of people meant to walk in some untapped realms of the Almighty God. God is crowning the work of past ages with a final and splendid work which prophets of old were not allowed to see into nor to understand but only to speak as inspired by the Lord (I Pet. 1:12, Dan. 12: 9-10). However, unto us has it been given to know and to manifest these mysteries of the kingdom. We are the perfecting generation (Heb. 11:40) and there is need for us to launch out into the deep so that we can begin to do as the Father pleases.

However, as Christ spoke in Luke 5:37 that no man puts new wine into old wine skin lest the skin bursts and the wine is spilled, so also is there an urgent need for us to severely purge ourselves and prepare our lives as new wine skins. “LET THE PAST PASS” is a clarion call in the spirit for us of this generation. The Lord looked down on the Israelites and spoke to Moses that the generation that doubted him had all died in the wilderness and the new generation was still wandering around in cycles therefore it was time for them to cease from compassing the same mountain and to move northward (Deut. 2: 2-3). Northward movement is a frontward movement; it typifies progression. As we take a critical look into the lives of the Patriarchs of old, we’ll begin to see how each one willingly buries his past so that God’s beautiful plan for his future may become real. I don’t know what your past is composed of, whether good or bad, but no matter what, there is still a higher place for you than where you are. Listen! Until you let your past pass away, you can’t lay hold on your bright future.

LET THE PAST PASS part 1

The life of a man involves yesterday, today and tomorrow and it keeps evolving until he steps into reality. Till then, tomorrow keeps calling him. The call of tomorrow gets him better if wise or battered, and worried if foolish. The reality of tomorrow (or the future) is in adjustment made on yesterday and the progress experienced today. The tomorrow of a man, which is his future, becomes bleak or unreal when his yesterday (the past) is still the focus or  consideration of the hour. If all that your reflection is based on are the past events of your life (whether good, bad or ugly), I would like to tell you that you should LET THE PAST PASS AWAY; for if you don’t, sooner or later you will pass away with it.

Many people the Lord is set to pass over to the other side (greater heights), but they themselves are unwilling. Their unwillingness is revealed by their attitudes of building monuments out of their past, whereas God’s plans for them is to make them eternal Excellences, joys of many generations (Isaiah 60:15).

Jacob is an example of a man who allowed his past to pass away so that he could move forward (Genesis 35:16-21. This he did after the demise of the wife he had served for a period of 14 years before she rightly became his (Gen. 29:21-28). Rachel gave up the ghost after giving birth to Benjamin. One would think because of this great bereavement (for Jacob greatly loved her), he would stay put and live within the vicinity of her grave, but he did no such thing. Rather he buried her and putting the past behind, he moved forward. For him, truly his beloved was gone but life still continued. Why hold down your future by your past? Why feel sad about what will work for your good? Whatever has happened is in the past and becomes a means in today to get ready for tomorrow, so don’t let it hold you down. No matter how bad it is, count it as manure for your positioning or reality. It is a spring board for a better tomorrow.  It is time to have a sense of the future and for the future, that no matter what happens or will happen or what your experience is, your destiny is eternally secured in God’s hand and no devil can destroy it. Therefore, you need to keep moving forward.

Joseph did not allow the event that surrounded his being sold into slavery to affect him. He was a man of vision and so he made the best use of all opportunities that came to him. He never allowed the past memories of being his father’s favourite and the fact that he was robbed of his coat of many colours to hold him down. He left all and focused on the future with the dream seed that God had given him. He judged God faithful that gave him the dream that though the dream tarries, yet it will come to pass (Hab. 2:2-3). Newer things come to be when you allow the present ones to pass. Joseph’s dream came to pass (Gen. 42:9) and when it did, he was not in any way ready to revenge all that his brothers had done to him. He had long forgiven them before they ever came forward to apologize. Thisreflected in the names he gave his children: Manasseh – meaning God hath made me forget all my toil and all my father’s house (Gen. 41:51). Only after giving birth to Manasseh did his Ephraim (God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction) come to be.

All that he did when his brothers came to Egypt was not to take revenge but to know the truth about his brother Benjamin and about the welfare of their father (Gen. 43:27-28).When he revealed himself to his brethren, he told them, “Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life. For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest.  And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and Lord of all his house and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt” (Gen 45: 5-8).Joseph re-interpreted his past; ‘it was not a selling but rather a sending’ (Psalm. 105:17). To re-emphasize his forgiveness of his brothers’ attitude, again at their father’s death he said, “But as for you ye thought evil against me: but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.”(Gen. 50:20). Joseph had an understanding which his brothers lacked. Although evil in their intentions, but they never knew they were fulfilling purpose and an assigned destiny.

Indeed, all things work together for good to them that love God and are the called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). God will use every situation in your past to favour you for the reality of your future. In spite of all unpleasant situations, things will still work well for you. While in the prison, Joseph related well and did not display any form of bitterness but good understanding that brought him favour (Prov. 13:15).He was made head of a part of the prison (Gen. 39:21-23). While a prisoner, his status never debarred the expression of his gifts. He interpreted the butler and baker’s dreams while his remained un-interpreted. If Joseph had been held by memories of his past, he probably would not have been able to become who he was meant to be.

Beloved, who you used to be does not matter any longer. What matters now is who God has ordained you to be. You need to face your present challenges now and with God on your side, these will bring you the change you need to enter your future.  When you forget your past, you move forward into a new day. God is resolved to take us unto greater heights but most times, we are too satisfied with what we have had (the past) so much that we build protective walls around them. Why don’t you take a step and venture into the reality of God? The future is real but residing around or in your past make you lose view of the future. Deut. 2:3, “ye have compassed this mountain long enough, turn you northward”. The command now is to Move forward! Move northward! Don’t by the emotions of the past make a decision not to live your destined life.

Consider the Patriarchs that have gone ahead how they forsook their past so as to lay hold of their future. In the case of Moses, when he came of age, a new beginning commenced in his life because he chose to forget the past. His past involved being called the Son of Pharaoh’s daughter, a title which made him eligible to rule Egypt as a king (Heb. 11:24) but he refused it because he had a view of the future. Men that have a short view of the future lay hold on the past. Don’t hold onto your past if you want to move unto glory and power. Moses understood that the future was brighter than what he had experienced and was experiencing. He was therefore willing to project into the future and this he did by faith.  Those that hold unto the past have the fear of the unseen. Challenge your fear with your faith. Everything you want is on the other side of fear. Faith makes real the future while fear kills the future. The fight of faith against the past projected Moses into his future. He killed an Egyptian and became a wanted man. Then he took to flight out of fear of being prosecuted and possibly killed. When God now wanted him to return back to Egypt for the great deliverance of His people, he remembered that latter part of his life in Egypt and began to give excuses.

Most times we don’t know that God is willing to take care of our past if only we let Him. This was Moses that in a bid to fulfill his God-given purpose, killed an Egyptian in favour of an Israelite and was ready to settle the rift between two Israelites until he was challenged with the exposure of his ‘secret’ murder. His authority as a judge was questioned… “And he said who made thee a prince and a judge over us?…”(Exo. 2:14). This encounter was too vivid in his mind, accompanied with great fear as well. When God told him he was to undertake the task of setting His people free (Exo. 3:4), Moses began to give God different excuses. But to all of Moses’ excuses, God gave him good and adequate answers.  Some of the excuses we give are only born out of our fear for tomorrow and our past experiences. Until you eliminate excuses in your life, you cannot live an excellent life. Excuse is a hindrance to excellence; it prevents the reality of your future coming to you. You must eliminate excuses that emanate from past experiences, events, knowledge etc. As excuses are eliminated, excellence is birthed. A step forward is always a press into excellence. This same Moses overcame and became a god unto Pharaoh (Exo. 7:1). If he stayed in the past, the best he could probably have been would be another Pharaoh with stiff competition if ever allowed.

Consider David’s life; a man that dared his life to face Goliath when all the army of Israel were too scared to. In spite of this victory won, King Saul out of envy, was unappreciative and desperately wanted to take David out! He, however knowing that God was on his side, used his past to secure a good future for himself. He had the opportunity of killing Saul twice but he would not touch the Lord’s anointed (although Saul had become an ex-anointed person). He never gave up by what he went through, but believed in the God that sent Samuel to anoint him. He could have questioned God and given up but he never did because I believe he counted that as foolishness (Prov. 19:3). He pressed on and the oil poured on him by the prophet of God became effectual. These days a lot of people throw in the trowel, that is, they give up most of the time because of delay to the promise in the past. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life (Prov. 13:12). Those that gave up are those that lay hold on their past failures. David never allowed the past to bind him. Even though he missed God at a point in his life, he pushed his way back to God to still remain a man after God’s heart and became a yardstick of kingship in Israel. The blood of Jesus settles all your mistakes, errors and sins of the past that the devil will try to bring against you. You are forgiven and all your sins are forgotten.

Some think that what happened in time past is sure to recur again and so to avoid this recurrence, they give up. Don’t give up! All you need to do is to dare to forge ahead against the pain of the past. The fact that you failed in time past does not mean you will fail forever.