Do you know what yesterday was? I’m sure you do because we have longed for it all winter. Yesterday was the first day of spring!
There is something exhilarating about this time of year. There are the springtime smells of fresh dirt as gardens and fields are prepared for planting. The spring air will soon be filled with the scent of flowers. Seeing the trees with their fresh buds, grass greening, and flowers growing puts a spring in our step (pun intended!). Temperatures are on the rise which automatically makes most of us feel better. In fact, you have to try to be miserable this time of year.
Why anyone would want to cling to winter and prevent springtime is beyond me. The coldness and barrenness of winter cannot compare to the essence of LIFE that is vibrant in the spring. Yet, many will cling to a spiritual coldness and barrenness rather than hungering for God to bring a springtime of new things into their life.
Isaiah 43:18-19 says, “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. (19) Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”
David Guzik in the Enduring Word Commentary has some great observations. “As Isaiah writes prophetically to Israel, they were mired in the desperate circumstances of captivity and exile. God wants to put their eyes on the new work He will do, so it begins with a reminder to not remember the former things. If they are stuck in the failure and sin and discouragement of the past, they will never go forward to the new thing God has for them.
“It is a fascinating – and instructive – switch between Isaiah 43:16-17 and Isaiah 43:18. In Isaiah 43:16-17, [we read, “Thus saith the LORD, which maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters; (17) Which bringeth forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power; they shall lie down together, they shall not rise: they are extinct, they are quenched as tow.”] Israel is told to look to the past by remembering the great things God did for them at the Red Sea. But in Isaiah 43:18, they are told, do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. This shows us that there is a sense in which we must remember the past, in terms of God’s great work on our behalf. There is also a sense in which we must forsake and forget the past, with all its discouragement and defeat, and move on to what God has for us in the future.
“… Staying stuck in the past can keep us from the new thing God wants to do. If Israel stayed stuck in the discouragement and seduction of Babylon, they would never look for the new thing of release from exile.”
A writer for Dayspring devotionals gave this simple statement: “Sometimes in order to come into a new season and spring forward in faith, we have to let go of the old season.”1
Letting go isn’t easy for most of us. We tend to cling to the past. Old hurts haunt us as we nurse the wounds. Old hateful words spoken to us in anger still ring in our ears. Failed past relationships and friendships taint our emotions with bitterness, resentment, and reservation for any future relationships. And the deaths of those near and dear to our hearts can cause of to languish in the memories, reliving events that were meaningful at the time as if they were a part of our present.
Yes, there are losses we must grieve and hurts through which we must navigate. But navigate; don’t stagnate. Navigation means there’s movement. There are attempts to get through. It may be an incredibly slow process but at least there is movement in the right direction.
Stagnation means we are going nowhere. We aren’t moving forward. In truth, we are rotting away, and the smell of our immobility is getting “stinkier” every day! That’s not good grammar but you get the point. And this is not what the Lord intended for our lives.
That familiar verse in Ecclesiastes 3:1 reminds us that, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” God’s new season is ready to spring forth in our lives. Will we open our hearts for God to do a new thing in us today?1https://www.dayspring.com/articles/spring-forward-in-faith
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