In a previous article I urged you to never give up. Never giving up means marching into your future with boldness and confidence, seeing each new day as an opportunity to move forward in all the best God has for you and taking each new challenge as a mountain to be climbed instead of a boulder that will crush you.

You have a great future ahead of you, but you will not be able to fully enter into it and enjoy it if your past still holds you captive. The past has the potential to keep you from experiencing the joy, freedom, and blessings of the present and the future—if you let it. God wants you to break free from your past and set your face toward your future with hope, courage, and expectation. And the best way I know to never give up on your future is to refuse to be trapped in your past.

God is serious about setting you free from your past. Perhaps no story in the Bible better illustrates this than the unfortunate account of Lot’s wife. Let me remind you.

A man named Lot and his family lived in a city consumed by wickedness and sin. God was angry at the degradation in that city (Sodom) and one nearby (Gomorrah), so He decided to destroy them. He sent two angels to Lot’s house to tell him to take his family and flee. The angels warned them: “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you or stop anywhere in the whole valley; escape to the mountains (of Moab), lest you be consumed” (Genesis 19:17). Lot’s wife made the mistake of disobeying the command to not look back. Right then and there, she turned into a pillar of salt.

Jesus did not want us to forget what happened to this woman. Luke 17:32 is a very short Bible verse in which Jesus spoke only three words: “Remember Lot’s wife.” That was His way of saying: “Stop looking back. The past is finished. Don’t look behind you; look to the future ahead!”

As long as you think and talk about your past, you will feel as though you have no future. God has provided one, but you will totally miss it if you do not understand that you have to “let go in order to go on!”

Sometimes when we focus on our past, we can’t even see our future. We become discouraged, hopeless, and depressed. Don’t behave as if your past is more important than your future by giving it too much of your time. If you do, it will keep you trapped in days gone by and steal your enjoyment of the present moment and your hope for the future. When Lot’s wife looked back, she lost her life. She lost her family, and she lost her future. I want you to know: you can be destroyed by looking back! You probably will not turn into a pillar of salt, but you can become as “dead” as a pile of salt on the inside if you allow excessive focus on the past to steal the life you have today.

By Faith I Keep Pressing On!