Are you living in the present?

I’ve often found that it is easy to live in the past or the future, but not so easy to live in the present.

Some people are constantly reliving “the good old days” – that time they made the game winning play or starred in the school musical.  Others are stuck in a not so rosy past – remembering the job they lost or the tragic death of a loved one.

Looking to the future can cut both ways as well.  It’s fun to imagine purchasing the home of your dreams or the tropical paradise to which you hope to retire.  But we can also get caught up in worry.  What if I don’t get that promotion?  What if get cancer like my mother?

The truth of the matter is God does not want us to live in the past or the future.  He wants us to live each day with Him, in the present. There’s no denying that our past experiences, good or bad, influence who we are today. But God is outside of time, and scripture tells us that He is the same “yesterday, today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8)  So while He can heal our past wounds and be trusted to hold our future, he wants to be with us today.

He wants to love us right where we are, and He wants us to love others right where they are. If we spend all our time living in the past or the future, we will miss out on the blessings he has for us today, and we may miss out on the opportunity to be a blessing to others.

If we focus on the “what ifs” of life, we may be wasting time worrying about something that will never happen, or we may be subjecting ourselves to repeatedly reliving those things that hurt us in the past that we wish we could change. God doesn’t want that for us. Matthew 6:34 tells us “tomorrow will worry about itself.” God wants us to live free from worry and fear because He knows that worry and fear are thieves. They steal our joy, our peace and our ability to experience what God is doing right now.

The good news is we don’t have to wait until some future time to begin to experience the Kingdom. God makes it available to us today! Will you trust Him with your past and future, so you can be free to step into His Kingdom and experience all that he has for you today?

–Shay Mason