Defined By Our History - Taking It to Our Knees: Declaring Who I Am

Defined By Our History

“The nature of our histories are always secondary to what we choose to do with them.”

• Craig D. Lounsbrough

Our histories impact us. However, what impacts us doesn’t define us. Our histories can scar us, cripple us, leave us plagued with deficits, and reeling from loss. Our histories can leave us with overwhelming insecurities, fears that sabotage our dreams, and a deeply running pessimism that runs rogue over anything that might appear to possess some bit of desperately needed hope. They can leave us with deep-seated trauma, an addiction that won’t relent, an inability to develop meaningful relationships, and a haunting sense that the effects of our past will engulf the whole of our future. 

Our histories might define our journey to this point, but they do not possess the power to dictate that journey from this point forward. They might tell the tale of where we’ve been, but they have no power to pave the road to where we’re going.

 

A New Thing

In Isaiah 43:19 God says, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

The radical boldness in this verse is both rich and raw. The past ends here. Decisively. Right here. In the ‘now’ of our existence. God draws a hard line that halts ‘what was’ and unleashes ‘what will be’. He Who is timeless cuts time in two. The story of yesterday is stripped of the power to pen the script of tomorrow. All is new!

God states that He is “doing a new thing.” Not some slick revision. Not an overhaul. Not something old dressed up to look like something new. Not some clever nip-and-tuck. He is doing a “new thing.” Something revolutionary. Something that sheds the past. Something that peels away the insecurities, crushes the fear, rips away the pessimism, shakes us free of the trauma, and breaks the back of the addiction. God is the great insurrectionist, rising up against the past and crushing it in the rising.

 

Revolutionary

The tone of ‘something new’ in this verse suggests something unexpected. Something whose newness is so ‘new’ that it breaks the back of our logic and leaves our reasoning entirely out of breath. It’s ‘new’ to the point that it catches us entirely off guard. It’s not something ‘new’ that we might devise or cook up in our heads because there’s typically not a whole lot of anything new in that kind of stuff. Rather, it’s something so wildly revolutionary and so far out-of-the-box that it will defy all of the shortsighted paradigms that we use to make sense of it.

 

Not Our History

And God does this ‘something new’ because there is no need to be held hostage to our histories. That’s not God’s intent. That’s not His design. The scars, the insecurities, the fears, the pessimism, the trauma, the addictions, the inability to develop meaningful relationships, and the haunting sense that our past will engulf the whole of our future are not who we are. Rather, they are the results of what happened to us.

These things might be how people have come to define us. A spouse, or a friend, or an employer, or a family member, or some random person functioning out of some thoughtless mindset might have slapped these definitions upon us once-upon-a-time. Someone might have looked for some handy way to conveniently define us in a manner that was comfortable for them, and so they cherry-picked some assorted bits of our history and declared us to be those things.

But God is “doing a new thing.” Not a continuation of what was. Not some cheap addendum. Not some hat-trick. But something new. This newness declares that we are not held hostage to the way in which the past has attempted to defined us. We are not sentenced to walk with some impermeable definition that has already determined the nature of our future as well as our role in that future. The ability to be different will always crush that which declares that we will never be different.

 

Building Blocks

Rather, your past holds the building blocks of your greatness. Your past holds the essential raw materials for the very things that God is determined to build you into. Your past is the resource for your future, not the story of your future. It is a massive storehouse of incalculable assets capable of constructing a fresh tomorrow. Our history is not what defines us. It’s what enlarges us, enlivens us, empowers us, and thrusts us up and out of whatever yesterday was into everything that tomorrow can be. Your past is the accumulation of untapped resources standing ready to be unleashed into your today and delivered into your every tomorrow.

 

More Than Your History

You are more than your history. No history, despite how massive can define a single human being. You are far more than the accumulation of years, experiences, disappointments, betrayals, losses, frustrations, and failures. The nature of your humanity is vast beyond a hundred lifetimes and a million experiences. You cannot be defined by your past. It’s simply impossible. No one’s past could ever hope to contain enough content to define the limitlessness of their humanity. Yet despite the frequently painful nature of your past, you can be enriched by it. That is what God seeks to do in your life.  Behold, He is doing a new thing in you.

 

Thirty-One I Am Statements

The thirty-one statements made by God Himself declare that you are bound to nothing other than the magnificence of your design. History is the recounting of what has passed, not the declaration of your design.

 

Conclusion

You will find all thirty-one of these “I Am” statements outlined in my book, “Taking It to Our Knees – Declaring Who I Am.” This book is a fresh, entirely thought-provoking, and richly insightful thirty-one day devotional that will assist you in both discovering and living out your real self. You will find “Taking It to Our Knees – Declaring Who I Am” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

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