Monday, December 30, 2013

Meet the Robinsons - Keep Moving Forward

Meet the Robinsons – Keep Moving Forward



The end of a year is here. Now it is time to look back and see what has happened in the past year. Was 2013 a good year? Did you succeed at your goals? Did good things happen to make you happy like marriages, births and new friendships? Was 2013 a bad year? Did you fail at your goals? Did you suffer a loss of a loved one or have financial problems? Either way it is time to, Keep Moving Forward! Out of the past of success or failure onto new challenges and heights.

I’ll not give a description of this movie here as I’ve already done so in another post here on Pixie’s Faith. In that post I talked about being adopted into the family of God. In this I’m going to talk about another lesson to learn from the movie, “Keep Moving Forward.”
Here is a link to the past post if you wish to learn more about the movie:

I will restate one important plot point of the movie, “Keep Moving Forward”. All Lewis wants to do is look back but he finds peace and happiness once he realizes he needs to keep moving forward. Once he stops looking to the past for solutions to his hurt he finds freedom to move on and grow into the person he truly wants to be.

The catch phrase “Keep Moving Forward” comes from a quote of Walt Disney
“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long.
We Keep Moving Forward, opening up new doors and doing new things,
because we’re curious . . . and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
~ Walt Disney ~

It is also a lesson taught in the Bible as well. God does not wish us to dwell in the past and let it stop us from growing and enjoying. Learn the lessons of the past but don’t stay there. Realize God has plans for us and they are for our good not our demise.

Lewis needed to forget the past hurt of being abandoned by his mother and move forward so he could accept the love of the family he finally came to have. Just like Lewis there are good things ahead if we leave the past behind.

Isaiah 45:18-19
Forget the former thinks; do not dwell on the past. 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.

Philippians 3:12-14
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has call me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Lewis felt lost, alone and like he was wondering in the wilderness. Why? Because he was focused on the past, the loss of his mother. Once he let that go he was able to move forward.

Goob is an example of what happens when you hold to tightly onto the past and do not move forward. He was so stuck in what happened when he fell asleep and missed the ball that it destroyed him and he tried to destroy others. He was so stuck he did not see that people were reaching out to him and moving on even if he did not. (Example is he said the team rejected him after the game when in fact there is a scene where a boy asks Goob to come over to play.) We miss the truth when we look through the dirty windows of our past.

God forgives and forgets our past mistakes and failures. We need to do the same. When I say forget I do not mean act like they never happened at all. Hold onto lessons learned from them but let go of the hurt and shame. If God can forgive us we need to forgive others we need to do the same. When we forgive others we are letting go of the hurt but not necessarily the lesson learned by the actions that cause the hurt. You can forgive but not fully trust someone. Trust needs to be rebuild. Use wisdom, not everybody you forgive needs to be treated as if nothing ever happened.

Remember this, God has plans for YOU and they are plans to bless you now, next year and beyond.

Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Sometimes those plans take us through a dark patch in life but God’s plans are always for our good. Just like Lewis had to be separated from his mother to find the family that was just right for him. Remember God is for you not against you.

Also remember the sun shines and the rain falls on the good as well as the evil person. In other words things just happen! Not everything is God playing chess with your life and moving you like a piece. Some things are natural consequences to your actions and others are just “life” happening. Either way God is still there to see you through.

I pray 2013 was a good year for you. If not I pray you see God was there for you and with you through it. I pray that 2014 is a better year for you than 2013 no matter how 2013 was.

May the God of peace be with you in 2014 and beyond.


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