As I thought about listening to the past it occurred to me that we have two options; we can listen to our previous experiences and act now in what they tell us or we can look for new ways of understanding life and explore what that might bring about.

• Are you a “last time we did this it didn’t work so it won’t work this time” kind of person?
• Are you a “it eventually works out OK so I’ll carry on anyway” kind of person?
• Could you be a “I don’t know how this will work out but I’m willing to give it a try” kind of person?

How much does the past dictate to you what you believe and understand about the future?  I don’t just mean hanging on to bad things from the past, e.g. I’ve been hurt or let down, so it will happen again.  I also mean the good things, e.g. my brother always goes the extra mile, he won’t mind me asking.

What about your walk with God?  Whether you’re just starting out asking questions, or been travelling this road for a long time.  Do you expect kindness and good things because that’s been your experience of God?  Or is it the opposite and God never turns up and just like other experiences of life you have, walking with God has been a bit of disappointment – why should it change?

The past can either be a chain around our ankles, slowing us down or a firm positive foundation on which we rely.  For most of us it’s probably both.  Although at any one given time its probably more one than the other.  Is your past helping or hindering?  And how does it influence your relationship with God?

As we go through this evening you may find yourself thinking about events from the past, positive or negative.  As you do would you write on the paper chains on your chairs a word or two that describes that event.  If you don’t want to actually write it down then please just write your name on the chain.  If you end up with lots with your name, don’t worry!

I’ve asked Philippa to come and share something of her journey.

Testimony – Philippa

Time to listen to what question I needed to ask him and to hear his answer

Bible Reading – Psalm 77

I yell out to my God, I yell with all my might, I yell at the top of my lungs. He listens. I found myself in trouble and went looking for my Lord; my life was an open wound that wouldn’t heal.

When friends said, “Everything will turn out all right,” I didn’t believe a word they said.

I remember God—and shake my head.  I bow my head—then wring my hands.  I’m awake all night—not a wink of sleep; I can’t even say what’s bothering me.  I go over the days one by one, I ponder the years gone by.  I strum my lute all through the night, wondering how to get my life together

Will the Lord walk off and leave us for good? Will he never smile again? Is his love worn threadbare?

Has his salvation promise burned out? Has God forgotten his manners? Has he angrily stalked off and left us?  “Just my luck,” I said. “The High God goes out of business just the moment I need him.”

Once again I’ll go over what God has done, lay out on the table the ancient wonders; I’ll ponder all the things you’ve accomplished, and give a long, loving look at your acts.

O God! Your way is holy! No god is Great like God!

You’re the God who makes things happen; you showed everyone what you can do — You pulled your people out of the worst kind of trouble, rescued the children of Jacob and Joseph.

Psalm 77 was written out of the exiles being in need of God to lead them back to the promised land.  God’s people had followed Moses and finally had arrived at what they had called the promised land.  Its known to us as Jerusalem.  The Hebrew people had settled and made Jerusalem their home and then it had been destroyed by the surrounding super powers at that time.  All that remained was a city in ruins and people deported to many places.  God’s people are now in a place of exile, of displacement and dispersement.  Psalm 77 speaks of a blunt honesty that the worshippers have failed to reach God in prayer and that their attempts to find comfort in the past have failed.

As the verses progress we journey from preoccupation with ourselves to a submission to and reliance on God.  The first verses are “I” based, the second part is “you” based.  The psalm looks at “our past” and moves from a reliance on the past into an understanding that God is free to change, to come and go.  He is not predictable but there is a promise that where he leads he will provide.

This new reliance on a changing and dynamic God relies on the people of God moving away from an “I” based faith of obedience to earn God’s favour to a “you” based faith of where “I” is given up.  Our expectations of God, our limitations of him, our desires for him to act the way we want him to – all of this has to be relinquished.

We can keep circling back held in by our past experiences and our preoccupation with self or we can take the brave step of moving forward with God.

The world we live in encourages us to concentrate on not giving away our “self” or preserving it and feeding it and yet this psalm challenges us to relinquish self; to understand that we live by gift and not by grasp.

Just like Jesus words in Mark 8 35.

For whoever wants to save his own life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it

Even when we look back on our past experiences of God this can sometimes limit us to what we expect God to do in the future.  Will we live with the dynamic and ever-changing God who can do all things and make all things new?

In our relationships we begin to feel comfortable and relaxed as we get to know people.  We open up more, we share more personal conversations and stories from our past.  We let them see the less “nice” side of us.  And there is a sense in which in our walk with God that this is also true.  But don’t let’s get carried away.  God is not there to be controlled by us, by our needs, by our plans for the future, for how we think things should work out.  Even when we think we are motivated by all the right reasons. God’s way is wholly other, not to be reduced to my needs or my expectations.  He is unpredictable and incomparable.

The challenge is to move from a religion based on obedience and earning God’s love to a fully liberated imaginative religion of awe and amazement and trembling before the Holy One.

Everything is up for grabs in verse 10.

O God! Your way is holy!

No god is great like God!

This is the moment that can go either way, a moment of deciding, to live in the world where God, the Most High can change, free to act; or to retreat back to a safer world where we are at the centre of things and can stay in control.

Response – paper chains and fire

You may  have already written on some paper chains but I’d like to give you the chance to do more if you wish.  Write on them some of the situations or memories of the past that are controlling how you view yourself, others and /or God.  If you prefer, then again just write your name on the chain instead.

Then join them together with anyone else nearby who written on a chain.

We have a decision to make now.  Do you want move forward, to live in the world where God, the Most High can change, be free to act; or are you not ready yet and would prefer to retreat back to a safer world where we are at the centre of things and can stay in control.

If you’d like to move forward, one small step, then I’d like you to join your paper chain up to make a link.  Make a chain if you have more than one.  During the next few slides I would then encourage you to bring your chains out to the front.

Indescribable – Chris Tomlin

Burn the paper chains

We leave the past behind, the good and the bad and wait on you God the indescribable, uncontainable, all powerful, untameable, incomparable, unchangeable, amazing God who sees the depths of my heart and loves me the same.