Finding Freedom from Your Past

We all have stuff from our past that is difficult, unpleasant, and even painful. If we are honest, there are chapters in the story of our lives that we just wish could be removed so no one else would know our entire story. What most people do with the unpleasant chapters from our past is to repress them by sweeping them under a rug or stuff them deep into our subconsciousness so that we can barely remember them accurately anymore. But what we know is that this is a very harmful thing to do, bringing self-destructive consequences. Our past can hold us captive if we do not develop a way to deal with our failures in a God honoring way. Jesus offers the way to freedom.

In our text Sunday Jesus meets the “woman at the well.” We never learn her name. She’s just the woman at the well. She does not really know it, but she has had a lifetime of seeking to meet her needs. Unfortunately, she has sought to have her needs met in wrong places and in illegitimate ways. As a result, she lives in a figurative prison, living with shame, isolated from other people and in a state of emotional turmoil. Then she meets Jesus. A man who told her all that she had ever done, yet he accepted her and loved her. For the first time in an exceedingly long time that woman lived as a free person: free from her past. 

Let us not live under any allusions about our relationship with God. He already knows everything you have ever done, yet he loves and accepts you in Christ. That kind of love and acceptance frees us from our past. Are you living in bondage to your past? Join me this Sunday and find a path to freedom from your past.