If you want to live a miserable, unfruitful, and quite honestly unGodly life…don’t forgive yourself!

However, if you want to be better tomorrow than you are today, you have to learn to forgive yourself of the mistakes and failures you may have made. Unforgiveness towards yourself and others traps you in a prison of discontentedness. It paralyzes you, keeping you from truly stepping out. Unforgiveness chains you down, not allowing you to experience true freedom.

The past can haunt us if we allow it to. But we must not fear the past and the things that have been done to us.

Jesus came to set us free from YESTERDAY, to make a way for us TODAY, in order to be with us for ETERNITY.

If God can forgive you, which He will if we ask, we must learn to forgive ourselves and others. Just as unforgiveness from sin separates us from God, so unforgiveness towards ourself and others separates us from our destiny. You may have messed up in the past, but that does not make you a mess up. You may have failed in the past, but that does not make you a failure. You may have wasted your past, or you may have been wasted in your past, but don’t waste what your potential can be. Don’t let your past failures determine your future. Live a lifestyle of forgiveness towards yourself and others. Learn from your past mistakes and use them as stepping stones to something greater. Leave who you were behind, but keep your life lessons with you. Author and theologian Lewis B. Smedes said,

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”

You and I have to learn to say goodbye to yesterday. I remember when I was younger listening to the song, “It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday,” by Boyz II Men. How true is that statement? It is hard to say goodbye to yesterday, but when you do, you are able to say hello to today. Don’t let your past determine your future.