Forward is the Way
Walking with Purpose Series — Discovering God’s purposes and learning to walk in step with Him
Written by Chantelle Kate
When we look in Scripture, we see that the Lord consistently directs His people forward. Forward into the Promised Land. Forward over the Red Sea and the Jordan River. Forward into battle, and forward to possess the land.
“Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.”
Exodus 14:15
“You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Break camp and advance…”
Deuteronomy 1:6–7
“Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan…”
Joshua 1:2
The Lord is so committed to moving His people forward that there are around two hundred verses in the Bible that command or encourage moving forward, looking ahead, or advancing. That’s a reminder roughly every second day! That’s how often we need it.
Interestingly, the only time we see God inviting His people to look back is when He asks them to remember what He has done, how His Hand has guided them and brought them into a place of victory.
There are many times when the Lord instructed Israel to pause and build memorials as reminders of His faithfulness so that future generations would look at those stones, remember how He led them, and give thanks.
“These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”
Joshua 4:7
Those stones were not there so people could dwell on their failures, but so they could remember God’s faithfulness, the battles He fought on their behalf, the miraculous journey He had taken them on, and the times He made a way in the impossible.
I like to call them faith-building monuments.
This is how they work: we pause to remember what the Lord has done, we give Him thanks, and in the giving thanks faith starts to build again. We recognize that He will continue to make a way, just as He has always done, and lead us forward by His providence into victory. He is faithful, and He does not change. What He has done before, He can do again.
His arm is not too short.
He is not too weak.
We do not look back to get stuck gazing at something that has been.
We look back to walk forward.
A Word the Lord Spoke
Last November I was in Canada praying for a woman at a church we were ministering into, and the Lord deposited a word into me, like a flash into my spirit.
Forward is the way.
He told me to speak it over her again and again.
Forward is the way.
And He reminded me of a favorite passage in His Word:
“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:18–19)
These have been echoing in the hallways of my heart ever since. I keep hearing them as the Lord draws my attention back to them.
Forward is the way.
It was His word in the moment for that precious woman, but it’s for me too. For all of us. A reminder that the only way is forward. Not back. Not reliving the failures of our past or overly analyzing where we went wrong and why, but forgetting the former things and looking up to see the new thing God is doing.
How God Sees the Past
God does not deal with the past the way we often do.
Through the prophets, He confronted His people with the condition of their hearts. The Israelites (like us) were often stubborn, hard-hearted, and steeped in sin, and God would point to their transgressions to expose what was in them so that He could call them back to Himself.
“Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”
Isaiah 1:18
But He does not seem interested in endlessly rehearsing old failures that have already been dealt with.
A beautiful example of this is found in Hebrews 11. There we read about Abraham and Sarah, and they are described as people of unwavering faith who believed God for the promise of a son.
“By faith even Sarah… was enabled to bear children because she considered Him faithful who had made the promise.”
Hebrews 11:11
But if we go back and read the original story in Genesis, we remember that at first Sarah laughed at the promise, and the Lord confronted Abraham about it. And yet when Hebrews tells the story, God records her faith, not her hesitation.
That says something profound about the way God deals with the past for all of us that are in covenant with Him. He sees it through the finished work of the cross.
The Word tells us that our sins were nailed to the cross.
“He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness… He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.”
Colossians 2:13–14
The things that once defined us no longer have the final word, or any word at all. The past that was sinful or “less than” has been dealt with. The Lord has tossed it into the deepest parts of the sea, as far as the east is from the west, and it will be remembered by Him no more.
But our faithful, loving Father does more than even that. The past where we trusted Him, where we believed His promises, where we clung to Him, God remembers that. And He raves about it. As He did with Sarah, boasting about her in His written Word for all the generations to come to read.
“He is not unjust to forget our work and the love we have shown Him.”
Hebrews 6:10
The Accuser Points Backward
The enemy, however, works in the opposite direction.
The Word calls Satan “the accuser of the brethren” (Revelation 12:10). And he loves to do it. All day long he will sit and point at the past. Remember when you did that, remember when you disobeyed, when you didn’t believe, when you weren’t enough. Remember, remember, remember. You are that person still. And he laughs.
And as we look at all these things, which truly we did do, guilt and shame attach like sinkers to a fishing line and drag us deeper until we sit down in despair, forgetting to look up at Christ, forgetting to walk forward.
But the Word of God gives us a way.
“Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”
Hebrews 12:1
There is a violence in that throwing off. We aren’t analyzing this thing that hinders or entangles us, turning it over in our hands, wondering how it became so attached, looking it over and examining it. No. Forget all that. Throw it off violently, get up, and run forward! Keep your gaze fixed on Him.
“…fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”
Hebrews 12:1–2
He started us on this journey, and He will see us through to the end. He is the perfecter of our faith. We don’t need to get stuck in analysis. The past that has been forgiven does not belong on our shoulders anymore.
Shame does not come from our Father. God sees us through the righteousness of Christ.
“God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
2 Corinthians 5:21
Where Are Our Eyes?
Even knowing all of this, many of us still struggle with where we focus our eyes. And what we behold, we end up becoming. If we behold our past, we will stay there, staring endlessly at it instead of moving forward. If we behold Christ, we advance, and as we do, we are transformed into His likeness.
The direction of the Christian life is clear.
Forward.
Last year and all the years before it are done. If there is something you need to bring to the Lord, bring it to Him. Let Him deal with it, and then leave it at the cross.
Forgive yourself.
Forgive others.
Receive the grace that has already been given to you.
And then move forward.
There is so much our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of hope and peace, desires to give His children.
Look up.
Look forward.
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You may enjoy exploring the rest of the Walking with Purpose series. Each piece builds on the last as we learn to discover God’s purposes and walk in step with Him.
In God’s Vision, Plan, and Purpose for You, we begin by learning to view our lives through God’s lens, discovering that He is not improvising with our lives but unfolding a purpose He has already prepared.
In God’s Word for This Season, we explore how the Lord often speaks into a particular season of our lives, giving clarity, direction, and the power to walk into what He is doing.
And in Little by Little, we reflect on how God’s purposes are rarely fulfilled in dramatic moments, but through the steady faithfulness of small steps of obedience taken day by day.
Next time, we will continue with the Walking with Purpose Series. Subscribe to be notified.
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