Trusting God with our future means it’s equally important for us to allow Him to heal us from the pain of our past as well. 

The other night I was journaling about my feelings, and this is what I wrote down,

“We can bury the pain of our past but it doesn’t mean it’s dead.”

Trusting God requires us to walk through our experiences and pain with Him.

Sometimes I think we, as believers, shove our pain down and top it off with a great scripture and call it healing. 

Scripture was never meant to be a bandaid in our life. Merely holding us together. The Word of God, our relationship with Him, provides healing that has side effects of joy, peace, kindness, patience, and gentleness despite if that situation gets brought up again. 

3 ways to know our past needs healing and that we are not trusting God: 

1. When our reaction to our past is as equal as if it’s happening in the present. 
2. If it’s hard to look at a picture or hear their name without getting angry, bitter, or resentful. 
3. If we find it hard to pray for them. 

We can bury our pain and go on with our lives without ever acknowledging what happened to us. 

There’s a difference between dying to our past and burying it alive. This means that we can live in the present through our past pain if we didn’t give it the proper burial. 

Trusting God requires us to hand over our offense, forgive, and know He is the one who will provide justice in this life or the next. 

Philippians 3:13-14 says, “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Some people have misunderstood this verse and taught us that we are to forget everything in the past. That is not what Paul was saying. The Scriptures teach us that memory can be a very powerful force for good in our lives. We see God commanding feasts and specific monuments to be erected in remembrance. 

In context, Paul was speaking about forgetting everything he used to trust before his salvation experience. Paul focused only on trusting God and what Christ had done for him.

We have to cultivate our memories through meditating on the great things God has done for us and spoken to us. One memory at a time, one thought at a time, we can have a proper burial for our past that honors God and the people. 

Paul could well be saying that after we are born again, we will continue to be saved from sickness, depression, fear, etc., as we hold fast to the truths of God’s Word. (Which is certainly true.)

Many would argue since it’s buried (it happened years ago or even a year ago), why go back? It’s in the past, isn’t it?

To which I say but is it dead to you? 

That’s the question. 

It’s kind of like trying to shove everything you can into your car before a vacation. Everything is packed in tight, all over the place, and you are hoping to get the trunk shut quickly before anything else falls out. Then when you go to open the trunk, what was packed comes out, falling everywhere.

One person or situation could be the key that opens our trunk, so to speak, and for us to spew everywhere.

Trusting God with our future also means we can trust Him with our past, knowing we don’t have to white knuckle our pain anymore.

We don’t have to live in a responsive way to our surroundings. We can keep our feelings in submission with the Word.

Let me ask you this about your pain:

• Did you heal with the Lord?
• Did you bury your pain without properly dying to it, so you don’t live from it?

I’m here to help you recognize that your pain is not a sin. It’s when we live from our pain that we can sin. 

Trusting God is more than a feeling; it’s a choice to have faith in what He says, even when your feelings or circumstances would have you believe something different. 

Your feelings and circumstances matter. God cares about them both. But those things alone are not reliable enough to base your life on. They can change at any moment, even in an instant. God, on the other hand, does not change. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow; therefore, we know He is trustworthy. 

It’s not about convincing ourselves or others we have moved on. Healing is about honesty and humility. Honesty with where we are, and humility in recognizing our need for the Lord. 

Trusting God is living a life of belief in and obedience to God even when it’s difficult.