Lesson 2: In this session of the No Regrets GrowthTrack, you will explore how your relationship with the past may be holding you back to a life you were meant to lead.
By Erwin McManus
Sometimes setting your past on fire isn’t about facing a particular failure in your life or admitting that your life is a failure. Sometimes it feels as if life has failed you. But what do you do when you look back on your life and realize that an endless number of bad decisions have left you trapped and suffocating in your failure?
Natasha’s story: “Somehow I needed to learn acceptance and find purpose, and to do that I needed to leave the past behind.” So… she started a small fire. On wide-ruled notebook paper, she wrote down everyone and everything in her life that had hurt her. She wrote down every pain she had ever felt, every moment of suffering she had ever gone through. She wrote them all down, every last one. And after she had exhausted every painful memory and written them within the borders of those pages, she placed them in the fire. She burned them to let them go. She literally set her past on fire.
Maybe that’s what you need to do right now: Start a fire and take every memory that continues to wound you—all the pain, all the regret, all the bitterness and disappointment, all the moments of betrayal and every failure—and take them out of your heart and put them in the fire.1
1Excerpt(s) from THE LAST ARROW: SAVE NOTHING FOR THE NEXT LIFE by Erwin Raphael
McManus, copyright © 2017 by Erwin Raphael McManus. Used by permission of WaterBrook
Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
As you reflect on these questions, feel free to write down your thoughts.
1. What memories continue to wound you? Erwin mentions: pain, regret, bitterness, disappointment, moments of betrayal, and failure—which continue to plague you?
2. Erwin says, “I don’t know where you’ve been or what you’ve been through, and it could be that for you the past is like an anchor holding you back and pulling you under. So no matter how dark it is, it’s time to stop looking back and start looking forward. If you want to find the life that will guide your way, then set your past on fire.” (The Last Arrow)
Setting your past on fire could mean rising above your past vs. walking away from it or breaking free from the expectations of others or whatever else God brings to mind.
What does setting your past on fire look like for you?
(Note: it’s dangerous to burn bridges. Burning bridges is about setting other people on fire, taking them for granted, demeaning their value in our lives. Setting your past on fire is burning away everything that should remain in your past and not be taken into your future.)
Act. Act on what you just wrote down.
When and where can you begin to set your past on fire? Have you already started?
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“We welcome and encourage comments on this site. There may be some instances where comments will need to be edited or removed, such as:
If you have any questions on the commenting policy, please let us know at heretoserve@globalleadership.org”