Daily Devotional

June 24

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

Don't cripple your present by thoughts of your past

[Some people] are crippled in the present as the result of looking back into the past ... to the fact that they spent so much time outside the Kingdom and are so late in coming into it... to be miserable in the present because of some failure in the past is a sheer waste of time and energy. The past cannot be recalled and you can do nothing about it... The world in its wisdom tells us it is "no use crying over spilt milk." Well, quote that to the devil! Why should a Christian be more foolish than anybody else? ... We must never for a second worry about anything that cannot be affected or changed by us. It is a waste of energy.... But let us go further and realize that to dwell on the past simply causes failure in the present. While you are sitting down and bemoaning the past and regretting all the things you have not done, you are crippling yourself and preventing yourself from working in the present.

... It is always wrong to mortgage the present by the past, it is always wrong to allow the past to act as a brake upon the present. Let the dead past bury its dead. There is nothing that is more reprehensible, judged by common canons of thought, than to allow anything that belongs to the past to cause you to be a failure in the present.... The people I am describing are failing in the present. Instead of living in the present and getting on with the Christian life they are sitting down bemoaning the past. They are so sorry about the past that they do nothing in the present. How wrong it is!

Spiritual Depression, p. 80, pp. 82-3

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“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”