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Living Hope SDA Church

Christian Martin

Burying the Past, Starting Over

And today, our faithful and true friend has a word he wants to share with you.

It's been our textbook during our Forecasting Hope series, and it's our textbook every time we gather together in His name.

It is the Word of God that speaks to hearts.

And today, I believe He's going to do the same once again.

And so before we go any further, let's pause.

Let's ask for God to speak through His Word.

Father in heaven, we just want to acknowledge you because You're the reason we are here.

I know that we can conclude that we came here, we chose to come, but Lord, I know that you ordained this moment to happen.

It's not mere coincidence that we chose to come today.

And we pray that as we continue to worship you in spirit and in truth, that the Word of God would now speak.

And we pray that the Holy Spirit, once again, would guide us, convict us, teach us, speak to us.

You know, it was Max Lucado who once said, God meets daily needs daily.

He gives you what you need when you need it the most.

Can you say that God, God has a way of giving to us what we need when we need it the most.

And what I've discovered is that it's good news to serve a God that does that.

And not only because He is faithful and true, but Because He's faithful and just when it comes to dealing with our sins.

You see, we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God.

I'm sorry if that's breaking news for some of you.

But the good news, the Gospel, is that God is faithful and true.

He knows that we are sinners in need of a Savior.

And listen to how Micah, the prophet, describes our God.

He writes, Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity?

He will again have compassion on us and will subdue our iniquities.

You will cast all our sins unto the depths of the of the sea.

God is saying I will take your sins and I will cast them deep deep in the sea.

What a beautiful promise, beautiful promise.

And I realized that there are things in our lives that we've all done, no exception.

From from friend Jessica to my right all the way to my friend Kim on my left and everyone in between, no exception.

We have all done things in our lives that we regret.

There's choices that we have made that, alright, at the moment it seemed like this is the thing to do, but we only discover that it's not and we learn the hard way, right?

And even though we can't be forgiven by a friend or a parent or a sister or relative, there still are consequences.

And we all have things in our lives that we've done that we wish we could change.

But the fact is that we cannot change The past.

These are 2 of our core emotions, shame and guilt.

It's something that many experience Often, if not even daily.

The reality is, is that some will say, yeah, you just gotta live with it.

If you've done something wrong and you're filled with shame and guilt because of it, it's like that for the rest of your life.

Gotta carry it, gotta carry it, and there's nothing you can do about it.

My message today is entitled, Bearing the Past and starting over.

The reality is, is that we can start over.

The reality is, is that God has given us a way to start over.

It's not some gracious, you know, relative or parent or employer or boss or manager that allows us to start over in circumstances in life.

God gives us a way to start over, a way to have a new beginning, a way to be able to experience a forgiveness that goes deep, so deep that it cleanses your past as if you had not committed that which has brought you so much shame and guilt.

And it's what the Greek manuscripts, you know, the Hebrew, Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the New Testament written in Greek.

I love the sound of that actually, baptizo.

There's some Greek words that just have that sound that I love, baptizo.

And the word baptizo, which we translate, of course, baptism, is God's way of giving us a clean, fresh, new beginning.

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Burying the Past, Starting Over

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