Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.”

I doubt he meant it this way, but my take is that what lies within you is Christ, the hope of glory. What lies within you if you are a true born again child of God is God Himself. That is so much bigger than anything that lies behind you or ahead of you.

The truth is that you can’t ever go back and change the past. It’s done. There are no Deloreans or time machines that will take you back to 1955 (or any other time) to fix what you messed up. For better or worse, it’s over and done with and you live with the consequences.

While you may not be able to start over, you do have the power to change your ending. You have the ability to rewrite the outcome of your story. And really what matters most isn’t how you started out but how you finish.

I’ve mentioned more than once that God’s story is heading toward a victorious outcome. The victory is already secure and the outcome is guaranteed. In fact, God’s promises are so sure that you can speak about them in the present tense, as if they’d already come to pass.

Jeremiah 29 talks about God’s future plans for His children. He knows the plans He has for us. That’s where our focus should be. We want to make sure we remain in God’s will so that His good plans for us will be fulfilled in us. We need to remember that having all the success and fame and money in the world is worthless if God’s not in it, but if God is with us, we need nothing else.

Lord, keep our eyes on You and on the heavenly prize You’ve set before us. Keep our eyes on the finish line instead of the starting gate because we will only find You as we move forward instead of constantly looking back. Be with us and be everything we need and we know that Your future for us is good. Amen.