A Rocky Start in Life // How to Live an Extraordinary Life, Pt 2

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Question – are you living an extraordinary life? A life that really counts for something … or not? And if not, why not? Well one of the reasons is that sometimes, the things of the past are ruining your present and robbing you of your future. It’s time to change that.

Now there are plenty of people in this world who want to blame the past for where they are today. Maybe you think that sounds a little harsh. You may have had a tough start in life, perhaps you were born into very humble circumstances or a difficult family environment. Maybe like my parents you had to schlep through a war or two, perhaps you lost your parents when you were really young. Someone who's listening today may have been abused. Another person has suffered from depression and yet another has been through divorce.

None of those things are very pleasant. None of those things are things you'd wish on yourself or even your worst enemy for that matter. What is it in your life? What circumstance? What relationship? What start in life did some damage to you along the way?

You'll know in an instant what I'm talking about so let me ask you this, to what extent are you still using that as an excuse today not to be living an extraordinary life?

We Australians tend to be fairly blunt and direct so I'm going to ask you a blunt and direct question. Not to ruffle your feathers so much but to force each one of us to face facts and the fact is that the majority of people walking around on planet earth today have something in their past that's ruining their present and robbing them of their future. So question, what is it with you?

The reason I'm asking this is that we've just kicked off a series of messages that we're going to be spending some time in this week and over the next few weeks called, "How To Live An Extraordinary Life". And the way we're going to discover how to live an extraordinary life is to look at the most extraordinary life that's ever been lived on this earth – the life of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.

Each day we're going to grab just a vignette, a small snapshot if you will of Jesus life and use it to understand Him better because of all the people who've ever lived Jesus is the best mentor and the best role model there is, right?

If you and I could model our lives on Him, if you and I could adopt Him as our life coach and mentor, if we could learn to live a life that looks a whole lot like Jesus' life well man O man imagine what a life that would be huh?

So why are we talking about the past and then talking about Jesus at the same time? Because this whole thing of the past ruining our lives is one of the greatest scourges and epidemics of our society today. Billions of lives are being ruined because people let their past rob them of their future.

What do we learn from Jesus about that? What was His past? What was His start in life? What did that look like and how did He handle it? Well I guess most people know the story. Jesus had rather a rocky start in this world. If you've ever heard me speak around Christmas time you'll know I love remembering that wonderful little Christmas pantomime from a slightly different perspective.

Mary fell pregnant out of wedlock. Now according to her the Holy Spirit did it, yeah right, who was going to believe that? And then she had a long painful journey in her last weeks of pregnancy from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea.

And then to top it all off the travel agent had lost their hotel booking and they had to bunk outside in a shed with the sheep and the goats and the cows. With the very first breath of air the little baby Jesus took was filled with the stench of cow dung and sheep's urine.

In a pretty rough world where Israel was under Roman occupation, how easy would it have been for Jesus to blame His childhood circumstances? But there was something else in His past, something much, much worse than that birth, something that could have left a horrible mental scar that marred Him for life and hamstrung Him from living the life that He lived.

So what was it? Have a listen with me, I'm starting at Matthew chapter 2 beginning at verse 13:

After they had left an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, 'get up and take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you. For Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him.

Then Joseph got up took the child and his mother by night and fled to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, 'out of Egypt I have called my son'.

When Herod saw that he'd been tricked by the wise men he was infuriated and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.

Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah, 'that a voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be consoled because they were no more.

So there you have it, infant genocide, ethnic cleansing all on account of Jesus. You don't think He knew about this when He was growing up, you don't think people blamed Him, you don't think this played on His mind and tore at His heart, you don't think that this one thing could totally, totally have derailed Him and pushed Him off course and kept Him from living His extraordinary life.

Just stop and think if hundreds perhaps thousands of children under the age of two had been killed because of you, what would that have done to you psychologically? And then being brought up as a refugee in a foreign land?

See we don't often think about this stuff but this was in Jesus past, this could have completely robbed Him of His sanity and of His extraordinary life. But instead He overcame it, instead He declared, Mark chapter 1, verse 38, He said:

Let us go into the neighbouring towns so that I may proclaim the message there also for that is what I came to do.

Jesus was focused totally on His mission, on what God had sent Him to do. Now I'm no psychologist but I have friends who are and from them I know what a complex and difficult process it can be for someone to let go of something in their past that's been holding them back. And hey, not just from psychologists, I know from my own experience of my own life how difficult it can be to let go of the past.

So here are my three essentials for letting go, for stopping the past from ruining your present and robbing you of your future. The first one is just deciding to change.

When I went through a major loss in my life there was a time of mourning and grief. Now that's normal but there comes a point when you just have to decide to say, 'Look the status quo isn't an option. It is time for me to move on, it is time for me to lay hold of the extraordinary life that God's planned for me, it is time for me, like Jesus, to get focused on what God has called me to do'. Some people today need to take that decision today.

The second essential is believing what God says and He says that if anyone is in Christ Jesus, anyone, then they are a completely new creation, all the old things have passed away and everything is new (2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17).

In other words your faith in Jesus according to God is meant to set you completely free from the past, now that's worth believing. And thirdly for those people who have hurt me, those who have caused the loss in the first place I have learned to pray.

Can I tell you that was the single most important thing for me. I prayed constantly and still do that the Lord will bless them, that they too would find Jesus. Pray for your enemies, bless those who curse you, that's what Jesus said.

And now I'm living the extraordinary life that God planned for me. So how about you? Jesus didn't let the past hold Him back and neither should we. It's time for you to live the extraordinary life that He planned for you.