Joel Osteen (January-01-2025) Daily Devotion: New Beginnings.
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43:18–19, NIV
TODAY'S WORD: We’ve all had negative things happen to us. People did us wrong, the company let us go, someone was rude to us. It’s easy to go through life carrying offenses, trapped in self-pity, blaming ourselves and others. Because we’re always looking back, reliving the negative, we end up carrying around emotional baggage that weighs us down. One of the best things you can learn to do is drop it. Whether it happened twenty years ago or twenty minutes ago, don’t carry negative baggage from yesterday into today. Now do your part and let it go.
Past hurts occurred once. Don’t let them continue to hurt you by always thinking about them. As long as you’re dwelling on the past, you’re going to miss “the new things” God wants to do. You need to be looking forward to new beginnings. But God will not release new opportunities as long as you’re reliving old hurts and old failures.
PRAYER FOR TODAY: “Father, thank You that I can be free from all the negative baggage that comes from carrying past offenses, guilt, and blame. Help me to treat the past as the past, that it’s over. I look forward to the new things You’re doing in my life. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”
