Living Life Backwards!

The Lord will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right. Psalm 84:11

You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. C.S. Lewis

It’s amazing how many times we hear people say, “If I knew then what I know now, things would be different. I would have done a lot of things differently, and things would have turned out better.” Sometimes we wish we could live life backwards!

Years ago when we were serving a county seat church, Randy felt that he had done all he could do there and that it was time to move on. He met with the bishop and they talked. At the end of the conversation, Bishop Fitzgerald asked him one question, “Do you trust me to do the right thing for you?” The answer was “Yes”. Randy came home and recounted the conversation, and said, “Now, what the heck does that mean?” We stayed another year and the church was recognized as church of the year for the North Georgia Conference. The next year, Randy was sent to Mt. Bethel, and we realized exactly what the Bishop meant – the rest is history. If we had been in control, things would have certainly been different.

Ruth Graham said that if God hadn’t been in control of her life, she would have married the wrong man several times. If she could live life backwards, she obviously wouldn’t.

That’s exactly how God deals with every child of His when we turn things over and sacrifice our will to His. We leave a growing area of ministry at His command, then He provides one better than we had ever dreamed. We surrender all our cherished hopes and die to self, then He sends overwhelming joy and life more abundant than we ever imagined.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about changing the history of our country and our people. People want to remember life differently than history records. What part of history should we change? Would that make us a better nation today? I wonder what the brave men and women who fought and died in the World Wars would think of eradicating their sacrifice? How would veterans who died in unpopular wars view the change? Would they want to live life backwards so they could change a decision they made?

Would we want to live knowing that all the joy, sorrow or pain that has been a part of our lives might be lost forever? Which event would we choose to eliminate in order to make our lives better? Instead of changing history, shouldn’t we learn from it?

When most of us look back over our lives and ask ourselves, “What would I do differently if I could live life backwards?”, the answer is obvious. Each decision or path we made or took leads to us being who we are as a person, a community, a nation, and a people. For most of us, the answer is that God has directed our paths, so we would change nothing.

Our job now is to look back over mistakes, bad decisions, lack of compassion and love, selfish ways, and anything that holds us back from achieving the life God has planned for us. The reality is we can’t live life backwards, so let’s make the most of the life that is in front of us.

A book is best enjoyed from beginning to end, but best understood from the end to the beginning. copied

Where He leads me I will follow, where He leads me I will follow; where he leads me I will follow, I’ll go with Him, with Him, all the way. E. W. Blandly