Prologue
pro·logue
(prō′lôg′)
n.
1. An introduction or preface, especially a poem recited to introduce a play.
2. An introduction or introductory chapter, as to a novel.
3. An introductory act, event, or period.
I remember wrestling with the idea that all that stuff I had done or experienced in my past was forgiven. I guess I bought into the idea that a lot of that stuff could be overlooked, but all of it!? Some things were so egregious, painful, and defining, that they couldn’t possibly be included in that “get out of hell free card” I was being offered. Right?
Coming to the realization that every single thing that I had done or been a part of in my past was forgiven and that even the stuff I was doing or would do in the future was forgiven really changed me. Positionally it changed everything, but as it turned out, it was all still widely determinant of who I was and the way I viewed myself.
Beginning to find redemption in all those significant points of failure, brokenness, and pain was the real turning point. Until then, all those things still had a hold on me and shaped the way I felt about and saw almost everything. Redemption isn’t just a “later on” and “way up yonder” reality, it was available here and now.
That changed everything.
At Life Plan, we challenge people to find the redemptive perspective in every significant life event. That simple process alone will change your life. It has mine. Every good and bad thing you have experienced is dripping with value, learning, and possibility. The redemption of the harder stuff is your experiential currency to spend to make the world a better place. To advance the Kingdom.
In our coaching practice, me and the other stakeholders I run with are spending wildly all that redeemed currency and experiencing unbelievable change and opportunity from that stockpile of currency we have accumulated. And it is a little different than I thought.
It is not that we are emancipated from all that bad in our past.
We are further qualified and approved because of it.
It is as if everything in our past is not the stuff we have moved beyond, but are now powerfully referencing for good, for the Kingdom. Everything in our prior life, careers, and experiences are not merely the “past”, they are prologue.
I no longer see all that as something I have to get fixed and move beyond, it’s now the necessary lead into the more glorious current story. I am not marked by my sin, failure, and brokenness, but further approved in its’ redemption. Everything I have lived through is no longer “past”, it is necessary and valuable “prologue”.
Whether sitting at a board table, across the desk from an individual leader, or walking the streets in South Africa, everything I have known or experienced is being appropriated and translated for powerful change at God’s hand.
It is humbling and at the heart of God’s intentions for all of us.
Consider
Do you know the powerful experience of forgiveness?
Are you walking with the powerful assurance of eternity?
Are you living with the redemption experience of God’s eternity at hand, here and now?
How much untapped wealth is bogging you down, instead of acting as a powerful prologue for a bigger story?