Three different times in the book of the Revelation it is said about Jesus that He “is, was, and is to come.” Trying to explain all that those words represent would be like trying to explain infinity. Let me just emphasize one extraordinary truth that description of Jesus speaks of. My story became Jesus’s story so that His story could become my story. Who I was as an independent self apart from God with a totally messed up personal story was taken up by Christ and crucified and buried so that I could be raised up in Him on the third day forever included in His story. My story is now His story, and therefore my present life and situations, my past life and actions, and anything that is to come in my future is now part of His story. He lives in me as my life and therefore, the burdens that I am facing today are His burdens, and anything that I might face in the future belongs to Him because it is now His future. He is more than prepared to face whatever the future holds in my/His life. One of the things I have discovered the enemy often uses to brutalize the Christian so that they can’t move forward is by keeping them consumed with their past. It is imperative that you understand that you no longer have a past. It belongs to Him, and He has redeemed it all. There is a past, but it is now His. Your history is now His – Story. He paid a huge price for your story in the shedding of His blood, and you and I no longer have the right to look back as if it were ours.
Paul said that one thing he did was “to forget those things which lay behind” so that he could press on for the prize of experiencing the fullness of the life story that Jesus wanted to live through him.
Those who are always looking back at what was are never able to look beyond it to what can be. You can’t reach forward and look backward at the same time.
He is the God “who is,” and therefore, the “now” of our lives belongs to Him. He is the God “who is to come,” and thus, we should never worry about our future because it too belongs to Him. Finally, He is the God “who was”; therefore, I should never spend another moment looking back longing for something I may have left behind or forever regretting something that happened by my fault or the fault of others because it now all belongs to Him. The miracle of grace never stops amazing me.