Getting Past Your Past

     We have all made mistakes in our lives.  Getting over those mistakes can be difficult, but it is possible.  We should learn the lesson from those mistakes, but not let the mistake itself dominate our lives.  The Bible is full of accounts of men and women who failed and got up again to serve the Lord.  One such person was Peter.  On the night that Jesus was betrayed, He let Peter know that he would deny Him.  Peter quickly blurted out, "Though I should die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee."  A little while later Jesus is taken captive and Peter runs away and out of fear he watches the events unfold from a distance.

     While Peter was watching, a maid came unto him and said, "Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee."  Peter in fear denies Jesus before all of them.  To get away from them, he moves out onto the porch where another maid recognizes him and says, "This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth."  Peter tells them that he doesn't even know who Jesus is.  Some time later others came to Peter and said that you must have been with Jesus because you don't talk like a Galilean fisherman.  Immediately Peter begins to curse and to swear denying that he knew Jesus.  At that point the rooster crowed and he remembered what Jesus had said, and he went out and wept.  Peter was overcome by guilt.

     After Jesus' resurrection, Peter is having a hard time getting over the mistake that he had made in denying Christ and he quits the ministry.  He decides that he is going to go back to his old lifestyle and be a fisherman again.  He allows his past mistakes to keep him down.  Rather than being who God wanted him to be, he allowed his past mistakes to dictate who he was going to be.  He spends some time with Jesus and is confronted on his love for the Savior.  At that point Peter decides to get over his mistakes and moves on to serve Christ.  Just a few months later, Peter stands up and preaches and 3,000 people get saved.  All because he chose to get over his past.  Once Jesus has forgiven us of our mistakes, we need to forgive ourselves and move on.  Learn the lessons from your mistakes, and get past your past.