Moving Past Your Past

Acceptance is not approval. Acceptance is making the most of where I am right now. Don't focus on things that I cannot change or control.

Sermon series: Man Missionary Martyr: Lessons from the life of Paul.

Title: moving past your past.
Clay Smith JFBC

Have the problems from your past ruined the promises of your future? God wants you to move past the bad things that happened in your past.

Acts 7:54-8:3 Steven is selected as one of the first deacons. His enemies put him on a mock trial on trumped up charges. Steven speaks, saying the God now resides in the hearts of His followers. Steven died, and Saul ravaged the church, putting believers into prison. This is the first we see of Saul. God then would use Saul to change the world.

Declarations of who I am in Christ:

1. I was made on purpose, for a purpose. God wastes nothing. Saul is from Turkey, the city of Tarsus, born around the same time as Jesus. A very strategic city, with lots of black haired goats, whose hair was used to make tents.

Saul was a tent maker. Acts 18:1-3. From a young age Paul was around lots of people. He was a Roman citizen with all the rights that came with it. Acts 16:37-39.

Paul was part of the group of fine culture Rome spread from Greece. God uniquely prepared Paul as a chosen instrument. Acts 9:15. This transformed Paul's life.

2. My identity is Received, not Achieved. Phil 3:2-6. Beware of imposters. Don't boast. If anyone has a reason to boast, it was Paul. Born a Jew, a Hebrew of Hebrews from the tribe of Benjamin, the only brother born in the promised land. A Pharisee back when that was a good thing, having a zeal for the Lord. Paul loved God.

Phil 3:7-11 Paul counts all these things as loss, all the advantages he had in the world, so that he could know and love God. This was the same guy who belittled Steven.

Better to give up achievements and control to God.

Phil 3:12-14...That I press on from where I am, toward the call of Christ Jesus

3. It's not how I start, but how I finish. 2 Timothy 4:6-8 Paul wrote from jail "I have fought the good fight ". We're fortunate to become citizens of heaven.

John Newton wrote the hymn Amazing Grace…despite living a hard life as a ship captain of a slave ship, estranged from his father with shame and guilt in his life. But by the time her died Newton was an influential preacher who said "I may not be the man man I want to be, but by the grace of God that I'm not the man I used to be".

Repeat to yourself every day: I am called and gifted by God. I can do anything He wants me to do. God gives me the power.