Pastor Victoria Osteen reminds us that we should invest in our future and not in our past, she said to invest in our past is to relive our past hurts, pains, disappointments. its easy to focus on who hurt you, what did not work out and all the mistakes you have made, but that is a big waste of time and energy, we can not do any thing about what has happened in our past, it is done and over with but we can do something about today, and when we begin to focus on what we can change and not what we cant change, that is a good investment in the future.
We were not designed to carry around all sort of unnecessary baggage and sometimes we feel our bags with bitterness, resentments and heart aches but we have to let all that go. we have to forgive all those that have offended us, release them, and forgive ourselves.
When we are weighed down by all of this junk, it is hard to see where we are going, its also hard to be ready to get there. A lot of times, we get so weighed down with this emotional baggage that we loose our passion for life and living. we need to refresh our emotional baggage every single day, we need to learn to travel light, because where you are going is far more important than where you have been but you cannot be weighed down by your past.
Too often, people do not enjoy the opportunities that they are living in today, because they are too focused on yesterday. when you carry negative baggage into your relationships, your would most likely ruin those relationships, we have got to decide that it is time to let it go, its time to put it in the past and shut the door to it.
Pastor Victoria Osteen wants us to understand that In life, you are not going to be able to walk through open doors until you have closed the ones that are behind you. when you are holding on to bitterness, regrets, the mistakes of the past, it will get you stuck, its like a trap you cant get out of, we cannot let yesterday trap us, we cannot be trapped in the past when God has a bright future for us.
Unfair things happen to all of us, people hurt us, we experience loss, we become offended, we make mistakes but we must not hold on to all of those things, we all have negative seasons, but we cannot allow those seasons to define our lives, we have got to put our foot down and say no more. God wants to give us beauty for ashes, according to the scripture, but you cannot receive the beauty if you do not give God your ashes. the best way is to give God your pains and hurts, open up, so that you can receive the beauty he has in store for you.
