I recently read a book called “Don’t Look Back” by Christine Caine and I really enjoyed it. I saw a clip of her on Instagram preaching at a church where she referenced the crux of this book and I was intrigued. I decided to purchase a copy on Audible. One of the main focuses of the book is to not be like “Lot’s wife” in the bible whom God was trying to deliver from Sodom; God gave an instruction to not look back but she did and she turned into a pillar of salt. Writing this now, I wonder what that scene must have been like with them fleeing, I wonder if they were not to look back because the destruction was too much to behold…….(random thought).

Not looking back on the former things but fixing our eyes on Jesus and trusting that the later part of our life and story will be greater than the former. I don’t know about you but I often find myself fantasizing about what the past could have been if I made one decision or the other, if I chose to stay somewhere longer, if I chose to walk away from something sooner, wondering about how I could have avoided what I consider mistakes in my life. I use the words “what I consider mistakes” because one thing I am learning in life now is that sometimes what we consider to be mistakes is really God writing a story. I digress, back to my point about “don’t look back”…….

It is so easy to get stuck looking at the past, it brings regret, and also fear about future decisions. I once heard Steven Furtick say this about regret “All regret is a misappropriation of imagination, it is you taking the wisdom of God for the future and applying it towards a situation that is already behind you.” That profound statement has stayed with me for years and I think it applies to the subject matter of this book.

I am practicing what I read in the book, learning not to look back, learning to remind myself that the path of the righteous shines brighter (Proverbs 4:18) and the days ahead are always better than the ones I have lived so far. I hope you don’t get stuck in the past, lingering and longing for what was or what could have been. I hope you and I change our perspective and focus and choose to look forward and walk toward the path and new chapters ahead. I hope we learn from the past, but we never let it change our focus of looking forward. I hope we look up to the one who holds the future and trust that God is writing a story with us and the fact that we are alive the story is not done yet.

Don’t look back as though what was is as good as it will get. The gift of hindsight is not to be abused to cause us to live in regret but it is to be a teacher and remind us that in the same way we can think back at the past and see things we did not see before, we can trust that the future also will be better than today. Rest in God and walk forward, I write this to you and myself, don’t look back, don’t linger for the past, look forward, and embrace the now and future.