Experiences from our past can have a strong effect on our lives and on our behavior, whether positive or negative. Great experiences can give us confidence and faith. But sometimes bad experiences can make us bitter, fearful, and untrusting, and produce a devastating effect on our lives and our relationships.
The good news is that negative experiences can also be turned into positives for our future, if we let God heal us and teach us what we should learn from them–allowing Him to conform us to the character of Christ. Learn to overcome negatives from your past and live the life God desires for you.
What’s Debt Got to Do with It?
I remember learning in high school about the craftiness of the former slave owners in the post-Civil War era. Yes, with the stroke of Abraham Lincoln’s pen, slaves were set free but there was a problem.
A big problem.
The slaves didn’t know how to be free, and the former slave owners took advantage of this immediately. (read more)
Being Single and Faithful
by Shana Schutte
When you think of vows, what comes to mind? Is it when a wife commits to stand by her terminally-ill husband? When a husband determines to provide for his family no matter how hard life gets? Or when a man and woman vow to stick together “’til death do us part?”
Vows like these are seen positively, as a God-given privilege, and are something most singles long for. However, not all vows are positive. In fact, some can sabotage romantic love and hinder singles from making it the wedding altar. (read more)
Victory Over Rejection
by Charles Stanley
Some prisons don’t require physical bars or chains; they are made by the emotional burden of rejection that affects every area of our lives. It causes us to believe lies about ourselves and undermines our relationship with the Lord. (listen here)
How Do You Deal with Heartbreak?
How should we deal with heartbreak? How do you get over the other person when there is a disadvantage that you see that person every so often (such as church or work), and you cannot escape? (read more)
Your Past Can Be One of Your Best Friends
by Stephen Viars
The Bible gives us several ways our pasts can be among our best friends. Of course your past is not an “it.” It is not a separate entity. But it is a record, in part, of the way God has related to you and worked in your life. The goal is not to focus on “it” but on who God is and what He has done.
As you read the following examples of how the past can be your friend, ask yourself if you are allowing this silent companion to serve you the way God designed. Perhaps there are elements of your past that are like a good friendship waiting to be cultivated and explored. (read more)
Overcoming feelings of rejection:
Coping Through Rejection and Divorce
by Betty Troyer
Rejection is a cruel and degrading experience. Self-worth goes down the drain. You are torn to bits and pieces and you wonder if any of the pieces will fit again. I wondered who cares, who understands? I’m a failure, and why do I exist? (read more)
Overcoming unforgiveness:
The Christian Grace of Forgiving
by Rev. Jerry Massey
Whatever secondary gains we cherish by clutching resentments are outweighed by the blessings of peace, joy, answered prayers, and usefulness to the Lord that might be sacrificed. When you place a seed into the ground its nature is to germinate fully to maturity. But if you inhibit the seedling as it sprouts upward, you will raise a deformed plant. Such is the prognosis for the child of God who builds a self-imposed wall of unforgiveness around himself. We become spiritually weak, sick, and deformed. How can we avoid this self-inflicted imprisonment and genuinely forgive such hurts? (read more)
Overcoming past failures:
Forgiving Yourself – An Important Choice
There is a tendency in all of us to hold ourselves more accountable than we do others. Perhaps you have been one who can justify forgiving others, even for a heinous offense, yet you find no justification for forgiving yourself for an equal or lesser offense. Perhaps you believe that forgiving yourself is not even a consideration because you think you must hold yourself in a state of constant remembrance, lest you forget. Perhaps you believe there is a price, some form of life-long penance that you must pay. (read more)