Defeating Your Past

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?"  Isaiah 58:6 NIV

 

Over the last 12 months, God has done a mighty work in my life.  This has been the most difficult year of my life, but it has also been the most rewarding.  For the first time in my life, I feel like I accomplished something of value.  And I owe it all to God and His hand on my life.  I trusted God to defeat my past and break the chains that kept me bound to it.  I was in prison to all of the things that had happened to me and I kept going in circles.  Finally after I began my forgiveness journey, I was able to start recognizing things about myself and actually let go.  Then I got to this place towards the end of 2011.

 

This recap is so worth it...so here goes.  Last year, today to be exact, I went to WalMart and in the course of that trip got the book "Fasting" by Jentezen Franklin.  I had already decided that I would fast for the last few days of the year and the first few of 2012 to see what would happen.  I felt a push to get closer to God in every way I could and I realized I needed to fast for real.  Not just abstaining from Facebook (that and anything like it is consecration) but abstain from eating, and put my body in subjection to the Word of God for a more intimate touch from Him.  My life has never been the same since.  I have experienced so many breakthroughs and revelations and I attribute it to fasting and seeking God's will for my life.  For the first time ever, I had to completely trust someone.  And this was difficult but relieving because the more I trusted God, the more in control of things I felt.

 

There is this song, "I'll Trust You" by Donnie McClurkin.  In the beginning, God via Donnie McClurkin says, "Will you trust me?  What if you call me and don't feel me near you, will you still trust me?  What if I tell you to let go of the very thing you think you have to hold, will you trust me?" What if it costs my life?  What if I lose the very thing I love so dear? These are questions he also asked.  And in this year, I have done those very things.  I have died to self in many areas, exposing my innermost thoughts and insecurities via my devotions and also via the juicing diaries I did on my YouTube channel, I have been vulnerable in ways I could not imagine, and it was freeing.  I can say through all of this, God has defeated my past, and it no longer has a hold on me.  No longer will I have the nightmares of loneliness and people finding out things about me that I tried so hard to hide and overlook, because I have been healed, delivered and made whole from them and especially the shame.

 

The key to all of this for me has been in trusting God and being obedient to what He put in my heart to do.  I am sure you have things that have created 'invisible wounds' as I like to say (that's my book title, to be released soon!) within you.  These things have kept you anchored to the past, whether its through generational curses of lust and sex,  perversion, cheating, alcoholism and drug addiction, insecurity, illnesses and diseases, or sexual abuse or if its through unexpected illnesses and deaths, these wounds are like sinkholes created by the roots of these issues in your life.  It was only God to expose these things to me within my own life, and I am so humbled to know God loved me enough to uproot those issues and deliver me from my past.

 

This was not a passive process.  I had to want to be healed, I had to want to be whole, and I had to believe and trust that God would do it.  I had to leave family and friends and loved ones behind so that God could a work within me.  I had to be honest with myself so that He could open my eyes to show me the real me.  Not the one I have seen all these years or the one that others told me I was, but who He called me to be.  I am not the same Marquita as I was at the beginning of 2012 or at any point of you knowing me.  I am different--yes, I still struggle with things and have some rough corners that need to be sanded down, but I am different.

 

The key to defeating your past is trusting God.  That means trusting God when He shows you the ugliness about yourself, about the decisions you have made and the things that have happened to you.  It requires allowing the scab to be peeled off of those wounds and looking at them for what they are.  If there is infection and it has spread to other parts of your life, you have to trust God's process for resolving those issues.  You can defeat your past, and it does not have to make sense to others (because if I told y'all what God has had me do...you would think I'm strange lol).  God is a healer, a provider, and a deliverer among other things.   He can help you get to the next level, free from the wounds and baggage of the past.  Trust Him!!

 

Take the challenge for 2013 and see your life change!  I'll begin fasting on the 28th by abstaining from fried foods again and possibly sweets, and then I will begin my full 40-day Daniel fast on January 1.  You DON'T have to do what I'm doing, but try fasting from something and when you would normally be eating that thing, pray more and watch God move mountains in your life!  Trust Him in this and watch things start happening!  Let go and let God!  It is time for you to defeat your past and break those chains!

 
Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shall you dwell in the land, and truly you shall be fed.  Delight yourself also in the LORD: and he shall give you the desires of your heart.  Commit your way to the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.  Psalm 3:2-5 AKJV