As we leave the Feast of Tabernacles, we should prepare our hearts to walk in the things we are believing to create by our faith for the upcoming spiritual year. What is our attitude and how will we live as we go into this time? One thing I want to do is refuse to allow my past to frame my future. I am refusing to go forward from this day and not have a different relationship with the Word of God. It is unacceptable that His Word would go unfulfilled and not frame my future, my daily life, and my reality.

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Show Notes:

I think we are far too passive in the way we read certain Scriptures. We tend to feel it is fine that we are not having an explosive fulfillment of those Words in our lives. We read that we are new creatures in Christ and that old things have passed away. But we think of it as a type of affirmation or as our quote for the day instead of a demand: “Yes, the old things have passed away! Through the blood of Christ there is an elimination of all that was in my life before. And there is something new being imparted to me.”

According to the Word of God, we do not know anyone after the flesh. So do we still know other people and ourselves after the flesh? I think we do, and we allow that way of relating to continue. We have our own excuses as to why we allow it, and those excuses are usually born out of our past history of relating to ourselves, to the world, or to the people around us. Whatever the reason, we have to be honest and admit that we have developed a faith in the Word not working and not manifesting in its complete power in our lives.

Paul wrote, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Why? Paul had to deal with the same passivity that we face. There is a popular excuse within Christianity: “My salvation experience means I have obtained everything.” But Paul said, “I have not obtained everything. Whatever I obtained in the past is worthless compared to knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection. Therefore, I leave everything of yesterday and press into an even greater fulfillment tomorrow.” We must have this same attitude that our past is done away with, and we are pressing into all that God has for us in our future.

Key Verses:

• 2 Corinthians 5:17. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature.”
• Philippians 2:5–11. “EVERY KNEE WILL BOW … every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
• Philippians 2:12–13. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”
• Isaiah 66:2. “To this one I will look, to him … who trembles at My word.”
• Joshua 13:1. “Much of the land remains to be possessed.”
• Philippians 3:7–15. “Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on.”
• Exodus 33:18. “Then Moses said, ‘I pray You, show me Your glory!’”
• Revelation 3:20. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”
• 2 Peter 1:3. “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness.”

Quotes:

• “As we start a new year following this tremendous Feast of Tabernacles, we have to say, ‘Whatever things were gained to me, those things I count as lost again. The old things pass away and whole new things have come.’ And it has to be that way for us.”
• “When it came down to Christ becoming our Savior, it was an act of will at that last moment in the Garden of Gethsemane that says, ‘Not My will, but Your will be done.’”
• “We may have been perfect up to yesterday. But as of today, we must press on to something that is greater.”

Takeaways:

1. Being born again does not mean we are at the end of what salvation is all about any more than a newborn baby has attained all there is in human life. Being newly born into salvation means that we still have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. It takes work on our part. It takes going after it. There needs to be the trembling in our heart at the Word of God because we must allow it to have the power in our lives to fulfill itself.
2. Whatever we have, we cannot say that we have attained everything that is available to us. Through the Word God has spoken, He has provided all things pertaining to life and godliness, but we have yet to attain to all those things.
3. We need the same attitude Paul had, in which we forget what lies behind and reach forward to what lies ahead. We cannot be stuck in the past, unaware of the new thing God has for us. It does not matter how limited or how great our walk with God was in the past—that was yesterday. And our today and tomorrow hold something greater than anything we have ever known.