for you people before it comes out of the bulletin..
take care and enjoy yourself for the camp..
cheers,
fei.
Making Peace with Your Past (Part 2)
2 Cor 1: 3-4
To recap, the 1st key to healing is to know who God is. He is the Father of mercies and the God of ALL comforts.
The 2nd key to making peace with your past is to know What God Does Through Us (v4).
“… that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble…”
Knowing the dimensions of pain is important because God comforts us to comfort others. When we know how painful it feels, when we know the meaning and extent of pain, we can feel how painful others feel too. When we are in pain, it is so much easier to hide in our corner or pit holes and just rot in self-pity. However healing does not come from hiding, but from serving others. God deposits an amount of comfort in our lives so that we might be able to comfort those which are in any trouble. The world and psychology talk about drawing our inner strength in the healing process. But we have an additional source of strength; we have our hope, which comes from our Comforter.
Here are 6 steps we can take in making peace with our past. Of course, they sound easier said than done. I know because I am still learning.
1) Change our patterns in dealing with life’s problems. In the past, we might be running away, but now we can turn to God for help.
2) Take a walk to the cross and lay down our pain at the cross. Sometimes we think we are really suffering a lot. Yes, I don’t deny it, but I also don’t deny how much more Christ suffered at the cross. Think about it and turn to our High Priest.
3) Make today THE day of reckoning. Live as if today is the last day of life and then we need to give an account to God. With this perspective, we will want to live life abundantly and to serve God productively.
4) Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
5) Put joy and thankfulness in 24/7. Give thanks for everything and every time.
6) Choose to forget when forgive. When we say we forgive, we also need to forget. It is a choice that we can make. Healing won’t be complete until we choose to forget too.
A Fresh Start means the old self must die! Unresolved dreams and unfulfilled wishes will still be there in our lives. We need to live with it and move on. It is not easy, but we will have to. In God’s presence, we WILL be comforted.
I OFFER MY LIFE
All that I am, all that I have
I lay them down before You, O Lord
All my regrets, all my acclaim
The joy and the pain
I’m making them Yours
Lord I offer my life to You
Everything I’ve been through
Use it for Your glory
Lord I offer my days to You
Lifting my praise to You
As a pleasing sacrifice
Lord I offer You my life
Things in the past, things yet unseen
Wishes and dreams that are yet to come true
All of my hopes, all of my pains
My heart and my hands are lifted to You
What can we give
That You have not given
And what do we have
That is not already Yours
All we possess are these lives we’re living
And that’s what we give to You Lord
