Your Past is Dead to Me
April 8, 2020 12:18 AM
Christian Robert
Date Received: 4/7/2020
During my morning prayer yesterday I felt the Lord wanted me to get up and read Acts chapter 2.
In this chapter the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples on the day of Pentecost like a mighty wind and they started to speak in tongues. A crowd came together in bewilderment. The people present came from many different nations. At that moment Peter stood up, raised his voice and declared the Word of the Lord to the crowd. As a result about 3,000 people received Christ as their savior and were baptized.
This is a wonderful passage in the Bible, however, I truly missed the point why the Lord led me to read this scripture? It was not until midnight that the Holy Spirit gave me a series of revelations. This is the point of the Lord’s message:
Peter denied Christ three times even after assuring Jesus “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you” (Matthew 26:35). After Peter realized what he had done he was an emotional wreck. He wept bitterly (Matthew 26:75). He betrayed his Lord, he did not keep his promise to Him and he failed as a leader in front of all Christians. Great feelings of guilt and shame must have gripped him, and I am sure the devil wasted no opportunity to remind him of his past failure.
Nonetheless, God chose Peter to address that entire crowd at the day of Pentecost. What an honor. The Bible says “there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). That included “Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome; Cretans and Arabs. (Acts 2:9). In other words, it is almost as if Peter spoke to the nations.
That was his time. That was his calling. He was full of the Holy Spirit, he completely set aside the shame and failures of his past, and he arose and addressed the crowd boldly. There were 3,000 salvations that day. As all those saved individuals returned to their own countries they took the gospel there with them. Those 3,000 salvations multiplied exponentially into many more conversions in all those countries.
What a mistake that would have been, if Peter had shrunk back because of negative emotions and feelings of unworthiness, shame and guilt that were rooted in his past!
As I was processing these revelations, and always in awe of how God can show you things you never saw even though you read those exact scriptures dozens of times before, at that time I heard the Lord say:
“YOUR PAST IS DEAD TO ME. I WISH IT WAS TO YOU TOO”.
There is power in his Words. It shook me. The next morning during my prayer time I felt the Lord wanting me to share this revelation with my brothers and sisters. I heard this:
“MANY OF MY CHILDREN ARE STILL STRUGGLING WITH THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN THEIR PAST”
If you are one of them, and you either made bad mistakes, caused pain or hurt to others, if you failed to do things the right way, if great injustices or betrayals happened to you at the hand of others, if you suffered shame, or if you feel your past actually makes you unworthy to serve the Lord, than this message is for you.
As it was with Peter, it does not matter to the Lord what happened in your past. If you repented and forgave it is now dead. Totally dead. Erased from the books. The Lord has a calling on your life. The great harvest is here. This is your time. This is your calling. The Lord can ignite a fire through you that can touch many places. But you need to make up your mind now, are you going to put your past in the grave? Right now this is what we are called to do:
“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you”. (Isaiah 60:1)
You cannot be a mighty warrior in Christ if underneath the armor there are emotions of self-pity, fear, unworthiness or shame. So if the past is still haunting you, then hear this Word for you from the Lord:
“YOUR PAST IS DEAD TO ME. I WISH IT WAS TO YOU TOO”.
