We're not prisoners of the past.
Having looked the past in the eye, having asked for forgiveness and having made amends, let us shut the door on the past—not in order to forget it but in order not to allow it to imprison us.
The past does not have to be your prison. You have a voice in your destiny. You have a say in your life. You have a choice in the path you take.
The past is not clinging to you; YOU are clinging to the past. Once you are not clinging, the past simply EVAPORATES!
To express yourself in freedom, you must die to everything of yesterday. From the 'old', you derive security; from the 'new', you gain the flow.
Forgiveness changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a blessing. Forgiveness indeed heals memories . . .
It isn't until you forgive what's in the past that you'll be able to receive the gift of the present
Whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it.
Forgiveness allows us to live in the sunlight of the present, not the darkness of the past. Forgiveness alone, of all our human actions, opens up the world to the miracle of infinite possibility.
But you know who you are when you're on your own out there in all that emptiness. There's no past, no holding on to the scraps that are all you've got left. Everything is that minute, or maybe tomorrow, not yesterday.
There is an appropriate way to use your story, not as an excuse but as a testimony to God's ability to free you from the past.
