Allen: When we live a life for God, He gives us a life where we can start over fresh everyday!  The fact that He is a God of restoration means our past doesn’t come into play!  Our mind is the battle field and the enemy wants to use our mind against us!  Satan has a funny way of reminding us and bringing up the past.  His goal is to condemn us and keep us down.  God doesn’t work that way.  God works by conviction.  There is a big difference!  For example if I were to help someone with there roping at a school.  The reason they are there is to get help and hopefully get better! If I were to show them some things that are holding them back, then give them the tools to correct those problems, and over a period of time they applied those tools to achieve a higher level of roping, that is conviction! You see they knew they needed help, now once I show them how to fix the problem areas in there roping it is up to them to apply those principles and practice them so they can become better.  The same principles apply to our spiritual life. God lays on our hearts areas where we know we need to improve and then gives us the tools to fix those areas! It is up to us to use those principles!

If I were to criticize them about the things they were doing wrong without encouraging them and giving the tools to correct the problems then they would get discouraged!  That is condemnation and that is the way the enemy works against us!  We have to keep in mind that no matter what happened in the past we have been given a new day! 

Clay:  There is a lot of people that are committed to God in there walk but our perception of God and how we perceive God to be toward us really makes all the difference.  For me personally, I had to move from a perception of looking at God as a judge.  I was always looking at the places I would fall short or do wrong.  It took me a while to learn and accept the fact that He has already taken care of all that!  When I realized that He just wanted good things for me, it came full circle.  I guess I looked at it like He was taking me through a maze!  There were all these twists and turns and I thought He was manipulating my life to where He could guide me and mold me into what He wanted me to be!  That does take place but it takes place by me following His word by faith and trusting Him to lead me through this world not by manipulation or condemnation.

Allen: Clay is right. A lot of people only look at God as a Judge. We have to establish the fact that God calls us sons!  Look at it this way, if you are a parent, you know your thoughts and intentions for your kids and they are always good!  We want the very best for our children and He wants the exact same thing for us! That is not to say that there will not be tough times!  But when those tough times hit we have to stay focused on God and know that He is not behind these bad things! John 10:10 is a fundamental scripture that basically draws the line in the sand “Satan comes to still kill and destroy but Jesus comes to give life and life more abundantly”. This scripture clearly tells us if something bad in our life is happening, which side of the line it is coming from!  When we realize how to access more and more good things in our life through God then it comes down to our free will.  By our own freewill we should keep choosing “life and life more abundantly”.  If we are not careful we can find ourselves choosing the opposite!  The enemy can use lots of things in your life to keep pulling you down and keep reminding you about past failures. Without putting God in the equation we can get stuck in a rut where we continually find ourselves making those same choices over and over! 

Clay:  This is an excellent point Allen.  Jesus tells us that there are trials and tribulations on this earth but He overcame them all and they are now under our feet. And now we are seated at the heavenly realm in Christ because He made us righteous.  We are children of God and heirs of God and heirs according to the promise of God.  We have His spirit here to live and abide with us and to give the power, strength, knowledge and wisdom to go through the trials that we go through!  He has provided us with a way to be victorious in all these things that we go through!  That is a good God that has provided us with all of this!  Allen brings up the very corner stone of all this in John 10:10.  It is the thief that comes to steal, kill or destroy. So anything that comes to steal, kill or destroy we know where it comes from because God is no thief!  So that should be the determining factor when we look at our lives and find something trying to steal from us or take away the good in our lives, that is not God!  God is trying to get the good over to us!  We can get it but we have to get it by faith and standing on His word.  When God says, He wishes we would be in health and prosper even as our soul prospers; we have to believe that to be the truth! The only way we can obtain that is by faith.   The only way to please God is by faith and He tells us that the just shall live by faith!  He made us righteous by what He done not what we have done. 

Allen: Clay has given us a very good fact in that God has already prepared a way for us.  All we have to do is enter into what he has prepared for us and let God take care of the rest!  Where we fall short is instead of letting God lead us, guide us, and direct us, we think we can do it better!  So we take off and try to do it on our own instead of just letting God take over and reveal the plans and direction in which He wants us to go!  There is a good chance that the desires and ambitions of our heart were put there by God.  To let God direct our lives is not necessarily saying ‘give everything up” but what He is saying is to seek out His will then He will ad all these things to our lives!  His promises in the bible are “Yes and Amen” meaning everyday can be a new day!  God is saying Yes to His future for us because He has a good plan for us!  So we can totally forget about our past failures and enter into His rest and know that He has our back!  All we have to do is walk right into the next step and say I’m going your way God and I’m going to seek first what you want for me!  “Seek first the Kingdom of God and all His righteousness; and all these things will be given to you.”  Mathew 6:33

Clay: We have to believe and act like God is good and He wants the best for us and those things will come into our lives.  The sad thing is you see a lot of people that settle for less.  They think God wants them poor, sick and in destitute.  I don’t see that anywhere in the Bible.  That is great news!  What we also have to realize too, because it makes a difference in our perception, is that He already gave this gift to us!  When Jesus was on the cross He said it was finished, He meant it was finished!  He paid the price and restored us basically back to the Garden of Eden where man was back in right standing with God and could fellowship and walk with God. To me all of this is an unbelievable gift and I want all of this and you should too.  Sometimes even though I don’t understand everything completely and maybe I don’t know exactly what to do in all situations, I do know that I’m not perfect  and that God is good and I’m going to keep striving for the good things that God has for me each and every day I wake up!  It is a new day!

Allen:  I can’t stress enough that we have to look towards God and seek the good things that He wants for us!  We have to think about eternal purposes more than temporary satisfactions in life!  When we do this it just opens up the door to a new day every day!  “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”  Romans 8:28.  God can even take bad circumstances or things that have happened to you and He can work those to become a blessing down the road!  God is the only one that can do that!  We have to realize we have to access these things by our own freewill because He will not force these things on us! I challenge you to seek God first in everything you do! When you do this you will watch the door to a new day open each and everyday!