Don't Look Back - Hope Carpenter

Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for being here tonight, wherever you are, all over the world, Facebook Live, YouTube, however you are tuning in, do me a favor, get on your phone real quick. Call your friends, text your family, tell them to come join us tonight for Facebook Live or pass this on. Share it. I have a word for you. Let me tell you something. All of us have been stuck at a time or two, right? We've all gone through things. But I can promise you this word tonight is going to jack you up. It's going to get you excited. You are going to want to just run into your future and stop looking at your past. If you struggle in any way with being stuck, this word is for you. So here we go. Here we go. Everyone under the sound of my voice has a past. We all have a past. Things we're not proud of. Mistakes. Things that make us embarrassed when we think back, or think back to what we did in high school or in college or even last week. Who knows? Makes us feel ashamed, embarrassed. All of us wish that things had never happened in our life. We all have a past. If you're still breathing, you have a past, right? None of us glow in the dark. But Proverbs 4. 25 says this. Listen. It says, let your eyes look straight ahead. Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly in front of you. Fix your gaze directly before you. Oh, that's good. Let that sink in just a minute. Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly before you. Listen, this is not a suggestion. This is a command from one of the wisest men that have ever lived. I've preached and I've taught so many times that our goal, that our aim is not to try to glow in the dark, or that there's this perfect place called there that we all reach and that we're supposed to attain to go to our goal. Our aim is to run the race that is set before us. And to Philippians 3. 14. I press. I press toward the mark for the prize of what the high call, the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Nobody runs a race to win it going backwards. Think about all the races that you've seen, races you've seen on tv, horse races, dog races, people races, car races. You don't see them going backward. They're going forward. Nobody runs a race to win going backward. Why have you ever tried to do that? You would trip, you would spin out of control. You would not win. It slows you down when you go backward, so your. Your progress is delayed. Do you get What I'm saying your progress. Progress is delayed when you try to go backward. God has not called us to go backward. God has not called you to look backward. God has not called us to think backward. Everything in God is new. Everything. It's a new day. His mercies are new. Every morning he tells us to see, sing a new song. He says to forget the former things. He says you have a new life in Christ. He puts a new spirit on the inside of us. Jesus even came to bring us a new covenant. Whoo. He says to put off your old self and put on your new self. It's new, it's new, it's new. Everything in Christ is new. So stop getting tripped up on your old self. Your past is in the past. It's over. It's done. You can't do anything about it. You can't change it. Stop looking in your rear view mirror.

You.

You are not going that way. That's the beauty of salvation. God washes our past. That's what salvation is. He saved you from you. He saved you from your past. He washes our past, and then what does he do? He redeems it. He redeems your past. Do you ever recycle? Those who are listening to me, do you recycle? Some people do, some people don't. Paper, cups, bags, boxes, all those things. And the definition of recycle is this. It's a way of converting waste materials. Ooh, y' all not getting this. It's a way of converting waste materials into new materials. That's what recycling is. It takes waste materials. Things that you just want to chunk, things you want to throw away, but it takes it. It's a process of converting waste materials into new materials. I'm about to run in here. Whoo. It's just like Jeremiah 18. The potter and the clay. Let's go there. Jeremiah 18, the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord. Arise and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words. So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand. That's a sermon all by itself. Sometimes you can just be going along life, and you think you in the will of God and you're working for God. But you know what? We still can be messed up when we are serving Jesus. You know it. And the clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he had to rework it. He had to rework that clay into another vessel as it seemed good to the potter to do. Listen, recycling is not a new concept. This is a biblical concept. It's where God takes our old language and gives us a tongue of the learned. It's our old ways and way of acting and shiestiness and sneakiness and our own lying self. And then he turns us into a stable, confident, full of godly character, human. Listen, God loves to use messed up people. God loves to take old, broken things and to rework them and reshape them and conform them into his image. It's not even about us. It's about looking like our daddy. It's that upward call. It's that pressing. It's that pushing every single day to become better so that we can look like Jesus and bear his image. Whoo. Listen. When I hit my lowest, when I hit the lowest time in my life in 2013, I was so broken, my heart, my soul, it was so confused. I was full of doubt. Poor self image. I knew in my spirit that I was called to do something great, that I was called to do, to be something great. But my mind warred against would say, you're too messed up, you've gone too far. You're too broken. You've hurt too many people. You'll never get over this. Then there was the voice of the enemy, confirming what I already felt, constantly berating my thoughts in my mind. But now I'm not confused. I'm not intimidated. I'm not embarrassed. I'm not bearing shame. I'm not reflecting what I've been through. I'm reflecting and showing where I'm going. But it takes time, it takes work to overcome those tendencies and those feelings, to stay stuck and looking back and living in that shame. God is so clear that he wants us to let go of the past and enjoy this abundant life that he's called to. John 10:10, he says, the thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. He said, but I came that you might have life and you might have it more abundantly. Isaiah 43, 18:19 says this. It says, forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. See, I'm doing a new thing. Shout, new thing, new thing. Now it springs up. Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams, in the wasteland land. Wilderness and wasteland represents our past. He said, I am making a way even with your past. He said, I'm making streams of refreshing even in your past. That is so good. But then he says, do you not perceive it? That tells me that it's a tough concept to grasp, a tough concept to forget. The forgetting and the dwelling. See, we like to sit around and just think, don't we? Forgetting and dwelling and focusing on the new thing that God is doing. He said, do you not perceive it? I'm doing a new thing. Susie, I'm doing a new thing. Jim, I'm doing a new thing. Tom, I'm doing a new thing. Do you not perceive? He said, but you got to forget. You got to forget. You got to stop dwelling and you've got to perceive the new thing that I'm doing in your life. Listen, God's always got a plan. God's always got a plan. Romans 8:28. He's already worked it all out for your good and for his glory. It does not matter what you've been through. It does not matter how bad you were. Listen, God's always got a plan. He has redeemed us. That's what salvation's all about. He's already redeemed us from the law of sin and death. It's done. It's done. Say it's done. It's done. No matter what the situation, no matter what you've done, no matter what you've got in your past, no matter what you got in your rear view mirror, it's done. Don't miss what God has for you now by living in regret. Don't forfeit what God has for you now by dwelling and focusing on your past. Luke 9:62 says, Anyone who puts his hand to the plow and then looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. That's tough, isn't it? What is the kingdom of God? It's righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Ghost right here. We're not talking about the kingdom of God. People think that that means heaven is not fit for heaven. No righteousness, peace and joy in this life. If you put your hand to the plow and you keep looking back, you're not going to have peace, joy, life, that abundant life. You're going to stay in regret, you're going to stay in shame, you're going to stay embarrassment. And the life that you're living right now, that's supposed to be that abundant life is not going to be. You're going to struggle with sleep, you're going to struggle with anxiety. Why? Because of what you're focusing your mind on. Your past righteousness, peace and joy. And the Holy Ghost is what he wants for you. In our culture today, there is a practice called mindfulness, and that is living in the moment, focusing on the now. And actually, the Bible actually started this practice. You know, there's nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 5:1 says, Give your mind to what you are doing. Give your mind to what you are doing right now. And most of us are not very good at that, especially us women. We can vacuum, we can hold the baby, we can talk on the phone, and we can put mascara on in between. But that's not focusing on the moment. That's not focusing on what you're doing right now. Today is the only day that you are promised the air that you have in your lungs. Today is the only day that you are guaranteed. And I refuse. I refuse to walk around bombarded by regret and shame over what I cannot change. You cannot change the past. The only thing you can change is right now. Right now. I choose life. I choose joy. I choose peace. I choose this great life that God has ordained me. I choose it today. What about you? He came that you might have life and have it more abundantly. More abundantly than what? Than your past one. He came that you might have life and have it more abundantly. More abundantly than what? The life you were living when you were living in sin. This Christian life is supposed to be the abundant life of God. He came that you might have life does not mean that you will have life. It's up to me and to you what kind of life that we have. We cannot help a lot of the things that happen to us. But we can happen. We can change. We can decide what we do with what happened to us. Listen, I choose life. I choose joy. I choose peace. I do not want to live another day in regret. I don't want to live another day in anxiety. I don't want to go to bed tonight and toss and turn because of what I did. Oh, it's been washed in the blood. It's under the blood. The Bible says as far as the east is from the west, My sin has been removed from me. I choose to stop living in regret. And I choose to press. I choose to press. I choose to press onto this abundant life of God. Stop looking at what's behind you and focus on the life God has called you to live. And it is called the upward life of God. It's not easy. Pressing is not easy. I've never considered myself to be a gym rat. My husband is a gym rat. But the times that I have gone into the gym. And I tried to press and I tried to press and I put that pressure on a certain muscle. It hurt. It hurt so bad. Bad. And you know they tell you when you work out that you have to literally break the muscle down before it can be built up. So thank God for the breakdown in your life. Thank God for every trial that you had to overcome. Thank God for every time they talked about you and they lied on you, it was just breaking you down so that God could build you up into this abundant life. Stop looking back in regret and raise your hands and thank God for every trial that you had to go through. Now is your victory. Now is your stepping stone into the abundant life of God. Stop looking back. Decide today to look, look forward. Keep your eyes fixed straight ahead in front of you and run your race. I love you. You got this. You got this. You got this. Come on, tell yourself. Say I got this. Get up if you need to, in your room right now. Pull your car over. Start talking to yourself in the mirror. Say, I got this. I love you. I'm praying for you. I'm believing for you to live your very best life. Thank you so much for joining us tonight here on Facebook, Live or YouTube, wherever you're tuning in. I just want to encourage you if you want to know more about how to live this abundant life. If you want to know more about how to leave your past in the past, listen, go get my brand new book. It's called the Most Beautiful Disaster. It's a story about how God just makes miracles out of our mistakes. We all make them. Everybody who breathes makes mistakes, but God wants to redeem them. This book is a tool that will help you learn how to overcome and be everything that God's called you to be. Take a look at this commercial.

Miracles can come out of mistakes and that's what Hope Carpenter discovered. Her marriage and ministry as she knew them were over. But God had other plans. And for the first time, she's telling the complete story in her new book, the Most Beautiful Disaster. You've never heard a story like this and it's a story that will change the way you think about how God can turn things around. The Most Beautiful Disaster is available online or at all major bookstores. Make sure to get your book first. Pre order your copy today.