Don't Look Back!

I listened this week to one of my all time FAVORITE talks given by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. When I attended BYU, he was the president of the university and he, often along with his wife would address us once or twice a year. I did not hear this talk as a student, but it reminds me of many that I did hear and I always left feeling motivated and encouraged. The video above is a much shorter message that pulls from Elder Holland's talk. The full version is below ...

As you can see it's called Remember Lot's Wife and it's still only 30 minutes long and well worth your time. You could listen while you clean the kitchen or fold laundry and then reflect on it as you contemplate your 2017 resolutions. Now that we are one week in, its time for some motivation, right?
Here are a few excerpts that I needed to hear and think about ... 

“This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13-14 ”

Elder Holland shared this scripture and this counsel ...  

At this point, let me pause and add a lesson that applies both in your own life and also in the lives of others. There is something in us, at least in too many of us, that particularly fails to forgive and forget earlier mistakes in life—either mistakes we ourselves have made or the mistakes of others. That is not good. It is not Christian. It stands in terrible opposition to the grandeur and majesty of the Atonement of Christ. To be tied to our earlier mistakes—our own or other people's —is the worst kind of wallowing in the past from which we are all called to cease and desist.  

He continues ... this happens in marriages, too, and in other relationships we have. I can’t tell you the number of couples I have counseled who, when they are deeply hurt or even just deeply stressed, reach farther and farther into the past to find yet a bigger brick to throw through the window “pain” of their marriage. When something is over and done with, when it has been repented of as fully as it can be repented of, when life has moved on as it should and a lot of other wonderfully good things have happened since then, it is not right to go back and open up some ancient wound that the Son of God Himself died trying to heal.

And this is the part I LOVE most of all ...

Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change and improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is that hope? Yes! Is it charity? Yes! Above all, it is charity, the pure love of Christ. If something is buried in the past, leave it buried. Don’t keep going back with your little sand pail and beach shovel to dig it up, wave it around, and then throw it at someone, saying, “Hey! Do you remember this?” Splat!

We can do this and so can others around us, so here's to pressing toward the mark for the prize!