ROAD to 31 Devotional - Day 4: "Going Back"

Listen to the "Back to Brooklyn" from my new MIXTAPE - https://m.soundcloud.com/jeannie-ortega-2/back-to-brooklyn

I thinks it's human nature to want to go back to a time when you felt better or happier or stronger. Back to Brooklyn was that for me, I had been in California for some time and missing my family, my home, and was just over the "fake it til you make it" mentality that was all around me. Brooklyn always had a way of being so real that it creatively inspired me and I just wanted to go back to that.

Throughout the years, I would feel that time and time again - whether in a relationship wanting to go back to the simple times or in my walk with God, wanting to go back to the time I first encountered Jesus and how passionately my heart yearned for His great love.

Lately, however God has been speaking to me about not looking to the past as a way of something to go back to but instead look at it as something to move forward from. Sure, we can recall the times when we woke up at dawn to study our word and meet with God and wish we did that again or the times we stood on the street corner singing "Jesus loves me" and shared all He did with everyone that walked by. But the problem with that is that everytime you don't do those things they way you did "back then" the enemy tries to make you feel condemned. In fact the Bible says time and time again not to look back.

Luke 9:62 "Jesus said to him, 'No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God'.”

Ecclesiastes 7:10 "Say not, 'Why were the former days better than these?' For it is not from wisdom that you ask this."

The apostle Paul testified that he too doesn't look back either. In fact he said - he's forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead (Philippines 3:13)

Have you been guilty of wanting to go back to the way it use to be? I know I have 📷🙋🏻‍♀️ But let me encourage you the way God encouraged me. Let's take where we've been and where we are currently and build from there to the Glory of God. He doesnt want us to live off of yesterday's food. He is always doing something new. Let's seek Him today for where we are now and strive to go from glory to glory with our God.

Isaiah 43:18-19 “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."

Prayer: May we all take where we are now and seek God further, pressing ON towards the high calling in Christ Jesus.

In our spiritual disciplines, we have never had more available to us than we do now, so let's use all the resources currently available to us and grow in God and reach the world in His name. AMEN