Breaking Free From The Past

About the host: 

Steve Gray is the founding and senior pastor of Revive Church  KC. He has been in the full time ministry for over 40 years and  was launched into national and international recognition in the late 1990’s as the leader of the historic Smithton Outpouring, and again in 2009 when he lead the Kansas City Revival which was televised nationally on the Daystar television network. Steve is also a veteran musician, songwriter, recording artist and published author. His books include When The Kingdom Comes, Follow The Fire, and My Absurd Religion.

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Transcript:

**0:00:00** Hello, and you don’t want to miss the More Faith, More Life podcast that we’re going to talk to you about the number one thing that’s holding you back from finding your future of what God wants you to be and becoming what you want you to be.

**0:00:13**  You were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life Podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life. I’ve spent many years as a worship, artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold, truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse.

**0:00:38**  When I was in my early forty s, I was craving more. More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the Word of God and searching for the biblical principles that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

**0:01:12**  So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life, and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week, it’s time to be and experience more.

**0:01:25** Hello everyone, and welcome to another podcast, more Faith, More Life. I’m so glad you’re together. We’re together today and you don’t want to miss a moment of this. This is not the one you want to miss because we’re going to talk about one thing that your mind does that just totally destroys your life, destroys relationships, your emotions, everything. Just everything. And we want to talk about what is that one thing that your mind does to you?

**0:01:51** All right? And one of the things is we’re going to talk about is your memory or memories, your past. Let’s talk about your past now. When we consider the past, usually most of us start exactly at the same point. We think of bad things, what bad things happened to me or to them. If we’re talking to somebody else about their past, what bad things happened, and they need to quit thinking about it. Just quit thinking about it. Just stop thinking about it. Just forgive everybody, forget everything and just stop thinking about your past.

**0:02:24** And that doesn’t work. But I want to first talk about what a lot of people don’t realize is they also get hung up on their good past and good things and they begin to reflect on when it was good those were the days type attitude, or holidays or I remember when Christmas we had all our family together. And now it’s not that way. Or when I had a great marriage and now I’m divorced, but I had a great childhood, and I was in sports, and I was in theater, and I was assuming, oh, I enjoyed it so much and I had so much friends.

**0:03:02** And then since high school or since college, I haven’t got to do anything. I don’t sing anymore. I don’t play sports anymore. Oh, I was the star of the football team. I was the quarterback. And I won. Let me tell you about all the games I won and all the special plays, and your mind goes over those good things, the good things that happen, but it still keeps you in the past. And that means with that recollection, with that level of acceptance, nothing you do now is going to match.

**0:03:31** That’s why people get disappointed at Christmas. It just didn’t feel like Christmas or it just doesn’t feel like Christmas. We get it, but how are you going to redo that? Because when it felt like Christmas, what you were a lot younger, your situation was different, your life was different, and now you’re disappointed. And so there’s a time that we need to let go of all our past, because the past is obviously in the past.

**0:04:03** Traditionally, though, of course, we try to advise people and encourage people, you got to forget all the bad things. You got to forget those that did you wrong. You got to forget your failures. You have to forget relationships that didn’t work out. And I’m pretty much on top of that one that there comes a time when we have to just finally grow up spiritually and tell ourselves, I’m loved by God, I’m forgiven by God.

**0:04:31** I’m going to do I plan on doing the best I can. If I can fix or restore anything, I’m going to. And then you just have to move on. However, easier said than done, because most people, they really struggle leaving their past, good or bad. Now, what I want to talk to you about, though, is something you may not have thought of. I don’t find very many people that teach this or even understand it. All right?

**0:04:59** The power of the past, good or bad, is a distraction and a destroyer. And so what we have to do is we have to break the power of the past and begin to realize why, even if it’s a good past. All right, so what’s hanging you up about your past is your mind. It’s the way you think about it. Everybody’s got a past. It’s okay to remember it, but way you think, what category do you put your past in? Oh, it was wonderful. Oh, it was terrible. I can’t get over it. Oh, I don’t want to get over it. I was a star football player, whatever.

**0:05:37** Well, when you look at the Bible and that’s our reference, because we want to have something that people have looked at for thousands of years that has worked for them. We may have people today say, I don’t believe in the Bible. I don’t use it, I never read it. But that’s not been historically correct with thousands of other people, millions of other people in hundreds of generations, right, because we looked not that far away past most of our colleges and universities in the United States were started under religion. It was religion that started them. Religious people started them so people could get educated.

**0:06:13** But it wasn’t Bible class all the time. It was regular education, but it was the underlying value of people and have a standard like, we’re all going to agree there are certain things that humanity, humans should not do to each other and we should live this way, we should think that way or whatever, and that’s gone now. It’s totally gone. So you don’t have that reference point. And so your mind doesn’t realize that or you don’t realize that your mind is actually your worst enemy because your mind is going to places, even good places, that are keeping you from moving forward.

**0:06:51** Now, in the Bible, back to the Bible, you may or may not know. The fellow named Paul who started out name was Saul. Saul was a great powerful knowledgeable, top of his class Jewish pharisee. He knew the word of God, he knew why he believed it. And he was very zealous. He loved God, at least he thought he did, and he wanted to do what was right. And so when these Christians came along, he realized, well, he felt like at least that they were a threat to Judaism.

**0:07:27** They were a threat. There were some Jews not acting like Jews, he thought, which they still were being Jews, but he didn’t think so. And then the biggest threat, though, for him and others like him was there were non Jews, people that weren’t Jews. And now they’re cohorting around and going to the temple like Jews and singing the same songs as Jews and listening to the same scriptures as Jews. And that’s what really was the thing that got it.

**0:07:55** It wasn’t so much that Jews didn’t want people to believe in Jesus at the time. It’s changed now, but there’s a reason for that. But at the time, they didn’t want non Jews acting like Jews, all right? They were afraid they would lose their identity to non Jewish people. And that was the biggest contention. Well, anyway, Paul, he believed that and he went after Jews and threw them in Christians, and he threw them into prison.

**0:08:24** And he was okay and even probably had a part of some of them dying or being executed or like Stephen in the Book of Acts, he was there and they laid their cloaks by him after they killed Stephen, stoned him, showing their approval and that he approved a high up Jewish pharisee. Approved of the killing of Stephen. Well, you know the story. He got so miraculously touched by God and he was on the road to Damaeus. He was going to demaueus, to do bad things to Christians. And he is so struck by God that it changed him forever. Very similar to what happened to me where I became a different person and things looked and felt different afterwards when I got touched by the very hand of God.

**0:09:12** So Paul has that happen, and he hears a voice and he doesn’t know who it is. He says, who are you, Lord? And the voice comes back, I’m Jesus, and you’re persecuting me, not those people, because obviously he’s real and he’s alive from the dead. So as time goes on, then Paul’s trying to serve Jesus. He’s trying to fit in with the Jews. He’s trying to fit in with non Jews. He feels like that’s his strongest ministry is with non Jews.

**0:09:38** And he comes to the realization that the biggest problem in his life is his past. Okay, now he had a good past, but it wouldn’t matter even if he had a bad past. What he had to do was stop allowing himself to mentally and emotionally value the past so much that he thinks about it all the time, or he thinks about the good, or in some cases, you might think about all the bad things. And he said, I’m going to have to do something about this because it’s my thinking, my thinking in reference to the past that is keeping me from moving forward.

**0:10:19** And he wanted to move forward with God. He flat out said, I want to know Jesus Christ, and I can’t do it with my mind going like it does. Because his mind kept going back to all the good stuff that he was taught. And it wasn’t bad stuff, it was good stuff. But his mind was his biggest enemy because of where it would go. And most people go to something in their past. They relive high school or a girlfriend or I don’t know what, but holidays, as we’ve already said, whatever it is, paul came to the conclusion, I have to leave my past behind. I have to get that past behind me.

**0:10:57** Now, the interesting thing is, though, he had never done in his own mind, he said, I pretty well had a perfect past, perfect life, and I’m going to have to forget it. And he calls, I can’t break this unless I come to the conclusion that all those things are just garbage to me because I want to move forward and I’ve got to quit. Now, it doesn’t mean he couldn’t remember them. He couldn’t remember him. He was also a Roman citizen. When he needed to remember he was a Roman citizen, he did. It was to his advantage.

**0:11:29** But he wasn’t living as a Roman citizen. All right, you get it. So he had to make the decision that it was how he was viewing his past. We’ve all have a past. It was how he was viewing his past was the number one thing that was going to stop him from his future. When I talk to people about their future and what they can be or how they should do or whatever, many, many times, maybe most of the time, the past gets brought up. I’m the way I am because the way I was raised, it could be I was raised in church my whole life.

**0:12:04** One person came up and told me, you know, I’ve been going to church my whole life. I said, well, that’s where your problem is, right there, because you didn’t get what you’re supposed to get. Most churches don’t teach you what I’m even teaching you right now, okay? So you can tell a person, just forget your past, and usually it’s their bad past, and they’re not going to do it because they don’t want to do it, but they don’t have a reason to do it either. The reason we do it is we want to go forward.

**0:12:30** We want to move forward. In my case, I hope it’s yours. I want to know God better. I want to know his kingdom. I want to know his word better. That was me, at least. But if you want to move forward in anything, you don’t have to not be able to remember the past. What you have to do is release yourself from the power of the past. I love to tell stories. I’m a storyteller when I get started, I just keep going and going and going. I got stories for everywhere and everything that’s happened to me in my life, and some of them are funny, some not so funny, but I don’t live in that.

**0:13:06** I enjoy it because they’re fun and they inspire other people or they cause other people to laugh or whatever. But you’ve got to stop the power not remembering the past. Paul said, forget that which lies behind, and he didn’t mean that. You’d never be able to have any recollection of it. But it’s the power he had to forget his good past and the power it was having over him was stopping him from moving forward.

**0:13:38** In fact, with many people that want to move forward with God, they’d like to, but I find they have difficulty because really it’s the same thing that Paul had. They have a religious past, too. They have other past. I know other things that have happened in their life, but there’s millions of people have a religious past, but they grew up in a church where there was hypocrisy. They grew up in a church where there was power struggles or love of money.

**0:14:02** In other words, most there’s millions of people that went to church, but it didn’t get them because it wasn’t believable. The sermons weren’t believable, and most of all, the people weren’t believable. And their parents, maybe their parents, my parents took me to dragged me to church. Well, yeah, it felt like that because even your parents weren’t believable. See, if you spend time around believable people that are really sincerely seeking out God and getting it done, then it changes everything.

**0:14:38** There’s a prophet in the Bible named Elijah. He had also had a sidekick named Elisha, don’t get confused, that took his place after he left the earth, after Elijah was no longer here. But I’ve often referred that Elisha, his sidekick, and then later the replacement got all his inspiration by hanging around Elijah. He knew he had to hang around with him. He said, I’m going to go with you. I should go with you wherever you go.

**0:15:06** And I want you to imagine that same thing happening in your you know, you go to church and you get dragged to church, maybe, or whatever, but then all of a sudden you walk in, you sit down, and you’re sitting next to know. You sit next to Elijah. There’s no hypocrisy. You sit next to Elijah. There’s complete sincerity. There’s complete dedication. There’s no wavering back and forth. And plus, he operates and knows the power of God, the presence of God, the things of God.

**0:15:39** Imagine you, or a teenager would be better, but you get what they call dragged to church, and you’re sitting next to Elijah every Sunday. Every Sunday you’re sitting next to that Elijah guy. I’m telling you, he is going to affect what you think and believe and influence you to be greater in God. He’s going to create a hunger in you. But most of us, that didn’t happen, right? So we get dragged to church, and we sit next to Mr. So and so, who’s got a big fat watch on his arm. And when it gets to be so long, those sermons going or the music’s going there, he rolls up that sleeve and pulls out that big old watch, and you see him. And what does that tell you? This guy’s not interested.

**0:16:25** He wants to leave. He’s got something better to do. Now, there’s other mistakes people make when it comes to church, too, that cause our minds to think differently. I always ask parents and children, what about your school? Tell me about your school. When you go to school, do you just get up anytime you want to and walk out and go to the bathroom, get a drink of water or whatever, wander around a few minutes?

**0:16:51** Well, no, they won’t let us do that. We have to get permission or a hall pass or something like that. And I said, well, when you go to school, you got whatever you’re studying. You’re studying history or science or whatever. When you go into your science class, do you get to play video games and bring toys or things, and you just play whether whatever grade you’re in, and you’re in third grade. Did you bring third grade toys during class, or you’re in 10th grade, did you pull out your phone and start playing your favorite video game while the science class was going on?

**0:17:25** And they say, no, our school would never let us do that. Why won’t they let you do that? Because what they’re teaching, at least to them, is too important. You’ll miss it. It’s too important for you to go to school and play video games when you need to be learning something else. Even a third grader. It’s too important to learn spelling or whatever. They learn reading or whatever to pull out your toys and bring toys.

**0:17:53** Can you imagine? A second grader needs to learn the ABCs or that’s probably past that need to learn ABCs or they need to start reading words and all of a sudden the second grader pulls out a coloring book and say, well, my parents sent me with this coloring book so I get to color anytime I want. Well, they would say what? We’re going to call your parents because this is too important to your education to color.

**0:18:17** It’s too important for you to play video games or to be distracted by anything else. But what happens when people go to church? Parents bring their kids to church and the first thing they do, they sit down the second or third grader and hand them colors or drawings or toys and say, here’s some snacks, here’s some toys. Well, you just told them that church is not important. Or you look at your watch, you just said church is not important.

**0:18:42** Or you allow your kid to text and play on his phone during the whole service and sit down and play on the phone. You just said this isn’t important. School is important. School is important. Church is not important. Well, church is the thing with the word of God that sets a standard. It’s what causes our minds to work, to be able to weigh out right from wrong, good and evil, and to focus in and know God.

**0:19:06** And just like sitting next to Elijah in church would change your whole life. Now, knowing Jesus when you go to church, really, and wanting to know Him, wanting to know God changes your whole life because when you go to church, it’s like he’s there, he’s there. You go to meet Him and other people that also want to meet Him. You just don’t go to make pals and friends and buddies who could care less about God. You look for those that want to know what you want to know and together he will come and you will get to know Him.

**0:19:35** And so we make so many mistakes as parents and leaders and we tell them by our actions, looking at our watch or whatever. I love it. The song leader says, let’s all stand and sing, whatever. And then there’s that old belligerent dad just still sitting down, right? He’s not going to stand up. He just goes Sit. Or if he stands up, mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble. This is not important. I’m not that interested and I want to get out and go do something else. I just come for whatever reason, business, to make business partners or make my wife happy or look good among the community, whatever.

**0:20:14** And so it doesn’t work. Listen carefully. Most everybody I meet that’s ever had anything to do with a religion in a church needs to leave it behind because it wasn’t real. And that’s why people leave. They say, millions of people you meet, you go to their door knock, start talking about your church, and they’ll say, I used to go to church. Why don’t they go now? Because the example of Christianity and the example of church, the example of what this is all about, was so terrible, so wrong that they didn’t see any reason to do it.

**0:20:49** But you sit next to Elijah, you sit next to Elisha. Imagine sitting next to King David when he pulled out his harp. Or King David is the worship leader at your church. See, it would change everything, because David was a man after God’s heart. And when he sang, it was so real that even demons would flee because it was so real, so powerful. And so you see your church experiences, your religious experience, your experience with your parents and examples, even pastor experiences where the pastor just looks down, reads these notes, or just seems like that person, woman or man, just can’t wait to get it done.

**0:21:29** They sound disinterested. It’s just a job. Well, then you got to leave that behind, because that’s going to haunt you every time you go after God, your church experience. And so we have the people come to our church, and it’s lively, it’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s loud. The music is like attending a concert. Why not? So you go, you meet a visitor, a guest or whatever, and afterwards you say, well, how’d you like the service, sir? Glad to have you here. How’d you like the service?

**0:21:59** And lots of times we get the answer. Well, it’s not the way I was raised. It’s not the church I grew up in. Okay, aren’t you glad? Aren’t you glad we’re not like that? Because the church you grew up in, what did it do for you? It’s made you what you are. When you think of God, all of the things you saw in a church with people who didn’t care, people there wasn’t zealous. There was no excitement. There was no fervor. There was no energy. There was no strength. There was no passion.

**0:22:28** What did that do for you? And now you’re finding a group of people that put that into it because it’s changed their life, and they’re meeting God on the scene. But you throw back to your past, your religious past, and, you know, I didn’t grow up that way. So, okay, now you’re uncomfortable with what’s right and what should have been in your life all along. You should have sat next to a passionate person who loved God. You should have sat next to Elijah, elijah, whatever.

**0:22:56** And you didn’t. Instead, you sat next to a Half hearted Lukewarm. I could care less, and I’ve got something better to do than this. I wonder what time it gets done. And you do that week after week after week, and guess what? You become that person. Yeah. Hypocrisy is like yeast that goes into the bread. And Jesus said, Beware of those pharisees. They’re like yeast. It goes everywhere. It gets on you.

**0:23:22** And so beware of pharisees. Or the religious people that are not really being true to it. They’re just going through the motions that pull you in. Or you were pulled in as a child or a teenager or whatever. And now that’s how you view the forward motion of God in your life, and you can’t get forward. So when Paul said, leave the past behind, he wasn’t talking about good past, he wasn’t talking about bad past, which there’s some truth to that. We can talk about that, but he was talking about his religious past.

**0:23:54** What was stopping him from moving forward with God and in life and into the things that God had for him and the things he wanted to do himself was his religious past. And as long as he was letting his religious past, what he grew up with dictate to him who God is now. And he was going to see God through those glasses of his childhood or his growing up or his teaching. He was never going to move forward with God.

**0:24:21** So I want to present that to you now. Millions of you need to hear it. Millions need to hear this, that God wants you to move forward. God has great things for you. You’re going to need God with the direction the world’s going, with the threat of more inflation, prices going up, world wars and other nations threatening us with missiles, all that stuff. You’re going to need a lot more of God, but you’re not going to be able to get it if your religious past is what you fall back on.

**0:24:50** That was half hearted Lukewarm, full of hypocrisy. Nobody cared. It was a dull, dead church, and you just wanted to get it over with. Well, of course you did. Of course you did. And that’s what ruined you. And now God’s given you a chance to seek out a church or some people friends, new buddies, new friends, good friends. Find some people that really love God and want to go for it. And you know what?

**0:25:17** You’ll find your future. You’ll find your calling. You’ll find all that you need to find out about who you are and what you’re supposed to be now, not then. Forget that. Forget the coloring book church that told you this isn’t important, and now take it on like it’s the most important hour or so, whatever. Our church goes a little longer than hour. But you go to church and say, this is the most important hour of my week because this is freeing me from everything that’s keeping me from walking with God and finding a God destiny and moving forward. Not just with God, but it will move you forward. God will move you forward.

**0:25:55** God wants you to succeed. You may not have known that because you’re around people didn’t know that. He wants you to succeed. He wants you to do well. He wants to be healthy. He wants you to be happy and secure and build a life that’s glorifying to him and that’s satisfying to you, okay? But you’re going to have to get rid of that old religion that’s kept you, and you didn’t see it then and you won’t see it now, especially if you do. Like most people, they go and seek out a church like they grew up in.

**0:26:23** What what did that do for you? Dull.

**0:26:26**  Weak.

**0:26:27** And now you’re going to drag your kids or wife or husband to that same dull church, and you’re going to hand out coloring books just to keep them occupied. Because there’s nothing of God going on. You got to change that, and you change it right now. You make the decision that’s it my religious past, boring past, hypocrisy past that even wasn’t you, but you grew up around it and it got on you, or you just saw it so dead.

**0:26:51** The deduction was, there’s nothing here. I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m going to find a church or believers or somebody that really believes in God and wants to go for God and has a future because I want to find my future. God will help you find the future, and he will bless your future. So what’s one of the number one things that’s stopping people from finding their future, their religious past, with you, even if you didn’t go to church, you have ideas about God that you need to change. Because chances are you learned them from people who they weren’t in church anyway, so how are they going to know? They didn’t read their Bible anyway. How are they going to know?

**0:27:28** And you need to get it and get rid of that old time religion. Get rid of your religious past. Paul said, I call it rubbish. I call it nothing. I call it not even necessary now. Great foundation. But now, if I want to know Christ, I want to know Jesus. I’ve got to be free from the past, my religious past, and I gotta push myself forward. I gotta reach forward. Push is not the best word because it sounds self effort.

**0:27:55** I’m gonna reach forward and find the destiny and find what God has best for me. Did you get that today? I’m so glad you decided to listen to more faith, more life, because you need more faith and you need more life. But now you know one of the secrets that is very seldom ever, ever in the whole. World ever taught, and it can really set you free and start you on a fresh path. So thanks for joining you today. More faith, more life. Be sure and go to our website and learn more. And we’ll see you next time. Bye.