You Were
I was scrolling through some old photos the other day and ran across a post I made years ago. It struck me how easy it is to look at an old picture and think, that was me. The younger version. The stronger version. The version before life got complicated.
The truth is, we do the same thing with more than photographs. We revisit old mistakes, old wounds, old regrets, and quietly let them introduce us. Sometimes other people help. They remember who we were at our worst and assume that’s still who we are. But most of the time, we’re our own harshest critics. We keep dragging old mistakes into the present and using them to define a person God is still shaping.
The problem is that God rarely seems interested in leaving people where He found them.
Abraham was an old man. Jacob was a deceiver. Peter denied Christ. Paul persecuted the church. Those things were all true, but none of them got the final word. God kept writing, and the next chapters mattered more than the previous ones.
I’ve noticed that many people spend their lives looking backward. Some are trapped by their failures. Others are trapped by their successes, constantly comparing today to a season that has already passed. Either way, they’re trying to live from a chapter that’s already been written.
But God is always working in the present.
When He introduced Himself to Moses, He didn’t say, “I was.” He didn’t say, “I will be.” He said, “I AM.” The God of Scripture is not confined to the past, and He doesn’t ask us to be either.
The past has value. It teaches us. It humbles us. Sometimes it reminds us how far we’ve come. But it was never meant to become our identity.
You were is part of your story, but it is not your name. And as long as God is still writing, no chapter gets the final word except the last one.
If you’re breathing, God isn’t finished.
If He’s not finished, neither is your story.
Share if this spoke to you.
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