![[Devotional] IN HIS PRESENCE: Take hold of the plumbline immediately](https://thenewsguru.ng/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Screenshot_20211202-092925.png)
By Oke Chinye
Read: Daniel 3:8-30
Meditation verse:
“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17).
To be scarred means to be deeply affected or marked by mental or physical pain or injury. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had just passed through a horrible experience. They had been bound and thrown into a fiery furnace heated seven times more. But they came out unhurt and untainted by their experience. They did not even smell smoke; meaning there was nothing on them that showed what they had just gone through.
Scorned, betrayed, and sold into slavery by his own blood, Joseph had every reason to be scarred. He was accused of rape and thrown into prison. He was forgotten in prison by someone he had helped. He could have turned into an angry and vengeful person. But when he found himself in a position of authority, he refused to let his past define him, he said “you meant evil against me, but God turned it around for good” (Genesis 50:20).
Jephthah was the son of Gilead, but his mother was a prostitute. His half brothers drove him away. So, he fled from them and settled in the land of Tob, where a gang of scoundrels followed him. When the Ammonites were fighting against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to him to request that he be their commander, to fight the Ammonites. Through his leadership, the Lord gave Israel victory (Judges 11). Esther the orphan became queen in place of Vashti (Esther 2). Moses, a shepherd who fled into exile for committing murder, led God’s people out of Egypt. He was eighty years old. (Exodus 7).
Irrespective of what your past experiences have been, don’t get scarred by them. Your past does not define you; it prepares you for your future. Do you know why the front windscreen of your car is bigger than the rear-view mirror? It is because what is ahead of you is more important that what is behind. Quit reliving your past experiences. Stop talking about the pains of yesterday. Look ahead and move on to what God has in store for you. “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). If God has. said it, then it is settled.
IN HIS PRESENCE is written by Dcns Oke Chinye, Founder of The Rock Teaching Ministry (TRTM).
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