Looking Back Isn’t as Bad as You Think - Encouragement for Today - August 1, 2019

Peace and perspective from God's timeless truths. [View this email in your browser]( Encouragement for Today --------------------------------------------------------------- August 1, 2019 Looking Back Isn’t as Bad as You Think [JAMIE IVEY]( [Listen to this devotion]( “Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble …” [Psalm 107:2]( (ESV) Recently, I sat in my parents’ garage, surrounded by boxes and boxes of memories from our family’s past. I looked through pictures, old school records and even trophies from my father’s boxing career over 50 years ago. My mom’s been known to save everything, and my dad may or may not have had his very first baseball glove from 1956 stored in one of those boxes! If I’m honest, I love the nostalgia that comes from looking back at where we all started. My parents showed me pictures of them dating and then eventually getting married in Las Vegas. There were pictures of my brother and me feeding goats, riding horses and living on a farm. So much about those photos seems like another lifetime, especially since I don’t remember those days. Then there were the trophies from my high school track career. My favorite photos were the ones of my grandparents living in Japan in the ’50s. Looking back at where we’ve been is fun and exciting, until you get to the hard stuff. If we’re honest with ourselves, we don’t mind looking back on pictures from weddings, births and high school graduations — but we don’t dare look back at other times in our lives. We all have seasons we wish we could put into a vault, throw away the key, and never think about again. For you, that might be an eating disorder, an abusive past, a season of extreme yelling at your kids, or infidelity in your marriage. For me, there are years I wish I could erase from my memory bank — years spent running away from God, living my life for me and me alone with no care for morality or the consequences. After I started following Jesus, I was afraid to talk about the years I spent living for myself. And when we’re honest with ourselves, sometimes we also fear talking about the struggles that happened during our walk with Jesus for fear of what people will think about us. Over the past 20 years of following Jesus, I’ve learned something important about looking at the past. Rather than seeing myself as a failure who made oh-so-many mistakes, I see myself as a human who can’t help but make mistakes. And instead of seeing a disappointed God who wishes He’d never created me, I know my heavenly Father looks at me and sees a child He loves, adores and sent His Son to die for. When we look at our past through the lens of the gospel, everything changes. When we look back and see Jesus rescuing us, we can speak about our failures and blunders. That’s when we get to point those around us to the God who loves us so much that He would choose to save us — even with the full knowledge of all the mistakes we would make. This is when we get to show the world that we are a redeemed people! [Psalm 107:2]( says, “Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble.” [Continue reading...]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Read about Salem Web Network]( | [Subscription Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe]( --------------------------------------------------------------- © 2019 Salem Web Network. All rights reserved. 111 Virginia Street, Suite 500, Richmond, VA 23219. This email is never sent unsolicited. You are receiving this email because your email address, {EMAIL}, is signed up to receive newsletters, updates, and special offers from Encouragement for Today. [Link](