Fervent Chapter 5 – Your Past

If I were your enemy, I would want to keep you burdened by shame and guilt, in hopes that you’ll feel incapacitated by your many failings and see no point in ever trying again.  (Fervent p93)

Not making the team.  It was devastating to me to hear I was not good enough to play on the team.  It was crushing to learn I did not get the position I had hoped for. It was debilitating to find out I could not participate in what I had longed to do.

It plays in my head like a reel of tape that cannot be stopped, over and over again.  “Not Good enough” Starring Me. It is the word “enough” that catches me every time.  You see Satan is wise enough to know the long-term damage comes from crippling us, not killing us. I am good at this, just not good enough.  I would have made the team if I had been just a little bit faster, I was just not fast enough. They loved me, but just not for this position.  Not good enough.

This is how we come to live a life in the shadows. We are lurking behind the door to a life filled with assurances of being enough.  We are peeking through the window of our souls waiting to see if we can join in the life we have always imagined. We hover above the grasp of enough.

But prayer, fervent, effectual, continual prayer can change all of this.  In prayer, we can take off the mask of insecurity and stand on the mountain of grace God has been in the process of moving for us since before the day we were born.

But just as God says to the ocean waves, “Thus far you shall come, but no farther” (Job 38:11) He has given us a prayer to raise us up above the sea level of Satan’s assaults from our past. (Fervent p95).

Call to prayer:  My verse for meditation and prayer this week is Isaiah 43:16, 18-19.

“Thus says the Lord…Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past.  Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it?  I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. ”

Pray this scripture over your life and watch as God is moving the mountain of grace and taking away the shadow of the past. Walk with God on the new road he has created just for you along the rivers of truth.