What Does the Bible Say About Letting Go? – What is YOUR Egypt?

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There are many people out there who have undoubtedly been through difficult times and have experienced had hurtful pasts. What we do with what has happened to us in the past can affect our future in ways that we sometimes can’t even begin to know. Sometimes we can remain stuck there out of fear, never leaving those places where those hurts occurred because, as odd as it may seem, they can offer some degree of comfort in the sense that the known is less fearful than the unknown. This was the case with Israel leaving Egypt. But what does the Bible say about letting go of past mistakes and moving forward to YOUR promised land?

Dwelling on the past will only keep you stuck where you are, never moving forward in all the blessings God has waiting for you.

It’s time for us to break free from the chains of our pasts and move forward into a new life, one full of hope and joy! It’s not easy but it is possible with God’s help.

So what is your Egypt? How does dwelling on your past affect your present? Read on to learn how to move on from Egypt.

Updated and republished from original date of October 19, 2019

What Does the Bible Say About Letting Go? – Looking at the Children of Israel

There was once a group of weary travelers wandering in the wilderness who also had trouble letting go of the past and kept looking back to the place from which the Lord had set them free!

In Exodus 16 we read the account of Moses and the children of Israel entering the wilderness after they had been out of Egypt for approximately 2 months, although some commentators say it was one month (see Rashi below).

We read in Exodus 16:2

“But the WHOLE congregation of Bnei-Yisrael murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.“

TLV (emphasis mine)

According to Rashi who was a preeminent medieval French commentator on the Bible and on the Talmud, “it was not until the fifteenth of Iyar, a month after the Exodus, that the nation complained about the lack of food. Until then they subsisted on the leftovers of the dough and matzah they had taken out of Egypt.” (Rashi)

Rambam (Maimonides (1138–1204), who was commonly referred to as Rambam) says that even though Israel has been in the wilderness and we have already been told this, it is mentioned again in this verse to demonstrate that the vastness of the wilderness around them is what made them fear finding food.

Or HaChaim, a classical commentary on the Chumash (a printed form of the Torah used for study), states “because of this desolate, non-direct route that had been chosen apparently by Moses was what frightened them.”

So it appears that there is an agreement that the hardest things they had to deal with at that point and the main issue at hand was fear that this vast wilderness Moses had led them into seemed SO big and SO desolate that they could not envision finding food.

Does the vastness of what you are facing in life right now make you look to the past and see it as a form of comfort? Do the words of someone, the abuse, the illness, the addiction…all seem less daunting than the monumental task ahead of you that you have to face? Do those former things harken you back because, while they were hurtful and harmful, you at least knew what to expect?

Israel felt that way too. Slavery seemed a strange comfort to them when facing a vast, bare wilderness where starvation seemed possible.

They had their God leading them and providing their needs and they STILL felt this way!

Well, let’s continue to see what Israel did in Torah.

Then they said to Moses and Aaron in verse 3

The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

TLV

Ok, I get it! I have been hangry a time or two so I can only imagine how they must have felt after trekking through the wilderness without food. But let’s have a good look at this.

They had been slaves. They were mistreated, beaten, forced to work hard labor with little food and little rest. Their own children were also slaves and forced to work.

This was a BAD situation they had been freed from. REALLY bad!

And yet, because they were experiencing hardship in the NOW, they forgot what life had been like in Egypt and somehow felt it would be better to have DIED there than go through the hunger they were experiencing now.

They let their fear get the best of them and allowed it to make them begin dwelling on the past and miss the new thing that God was doing in the NOW.

To paraphrase Pastor Tony Evans and Chrystal Evans Hurst in their book, Kingdom Woman, God may have delivered the Israelites from Egypt but Egypt hadn’t been delivered from the Israelites!

Dwelling on Past Hurts – Does This Story Sound Familiar?

Do we sometimes do the same thing? Albeit our circumstances aren’t usually quite as bad as being former slaves trekking through the desert for 2 months while feeling like you are starving, we often have situations we have left behind us that, as soon as things get tough and feel heavy laden we look back at and long for it.

Maybe it was a relationship where there was physical abuse or emotional abuse.

Maybe it was a boss that made your life miserable for a variety of reasons.

Maybe it was even a life of sin.

Yes, sometimes we even look longingly back at our life before Yeshua and wonder if we hadn’t been better off! I think if you’ve been a believer for more than 5 minutes you’ve done this!

After all, the enemy left us alone then! We didn’t go through spiritual attacks or trials of many kinds as we do as believers. 

We focus on our feelings at the moment rather than long-term gain and begin dwelling on the past we should have left behind and let go of things that he tries to convince us we should hang onto! He makes us fear what the future holds in our Christian life and makes us even question what awaits us in eternal life.

He causes us to question the good things God has for us and whether we are truly a new creature in Christ or just the same old person who isn’t capable of change (as though change is our own doing vs the power of God for change). He never wants us to let go of guilt or believe that a new life outside Egypt is not only possible but the very promise of the coming Kingdom of God and the manifestation of God’s love.

Sound familiar?

What Does the Bible Say About Letting Go? – Blinded by Time and Distance

When looking at what the Bible says about letting go of the past we see that time and distance can sometimes blind us to how bad things were for us before. 

Pain hurts but the thing about pain, as any woman who has given birth can attest to, once it ends we often forget how bad that pain was when we look back upon it.

It can make us forget how bad that boss was. It can make us forget how damaging that relationship was and wonder if we should believe the person’s changed and we should take them back.

A lot of times it can make us forget how we were lost to sin. Letting go of things and people from our life of sin can seem easy when we first come to Jesus but then when things get difficult, it can sometimes become easier to let them back in. We may THINK we won’t fall prey to that life anymore. We may feel we will find comfort in it because after all, walking in this new life where we have to make some serious changes can be hard. And when things get hard we crave familiarity.

We focus on the hardships we have now – in THIS moment!

We murmur and complain like the children of Israel did.

The things we pray for, we all of a sudden despise because receiving them came with discomfort! Our past mistakes seem so distant from us that we feel we won’t fall into them again.

God’s good plans for Israel came with discomfort, it came with the need to trust and wait, it came with the need to rely on their Heavenly Father for even their meals. It came with the need to rely on the leadership of Moses who would disappear up on top of a mountain and the only thing they could think to do was build a golden calf because their own understanding was greater at that moment than letting go of control and trusting what the Lord would do next.

Sometimes the very things we pray for, we all of a sudden despise because receiving them came with discomfort! Share on X

Dwelling on the Past – So, What is your Egypt?

So my friend, what is Egypt in YOUR life?

What are the areas of your life that you keep looking back at? Is there something that keeps you dwelling on the past?

What are those different things that you sometimes long for when things get tough, those things that give you the illusion of control by hanging onto them rather than letting the Holy Spirit lead you forward?

Find what it is, give it into the hands of almighty God and then sink that ship!! Don’t look back!

Wait, what? Sink the ship? What are you talking about??

Sink the Ships

Hernan Cortes, so the story goes, brought his men on shore to fight a battle they could very well lose. He knew the risk. He knew the ships were there on shore and if the battle got tough the men could jump into those ships and flee. 

He wanted them committed. It was fight or die but fleeing was not going to be an option.

So he sunk the ships. Some accounts say he burned them but it seems as though sinking them was the most likely account. Either way, the ships were destroyed and the men were there to stay.

When faced with no option for retreat, you put your all into the fight.

When YOUR enemy rears his ugly head and life gets tough, sink the ships. Sink those past failures that he wants to bring up.

When that job makes you wonder if you hadn’t been better off at your old one, sink the ships.

When you wonder if the pain and hurt from that relationship was better than being alone, sink the ships.

Don’t look back to your Egypt. Stop dwelling on the past! Don’t LIVE there! Don’t murmur or complain but keep moving forward. Focus on the present!

The murmuring and complaining and the rebellion against God and Moses (see how Miriam was give tzara’at or what translators sometimes (somewhat incorrectly) translate as leprosy, for speaking out against Moses with Aaron in Numbers 12) kept the children of Israel in the wilderness for 40 years when it was a trip that should have taken just weeks.

Don’t keep walking around that mountain when you could be moving forward to your promised land.  Trust God with your destination!

Bible Verses About Letting Go of Past Mistakes

Isaiah 43:18-19

“Do not remember former things,

nor consider things of the past.

Here I am, doing a new thing;

Now it is springing up—

    do you not know about it?

I will surely make a way in the desert,

    rivers in the wasteland.”

TLV

Philippians 3:13-14

“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself as having taken hold of this. But this one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal for the reward of the upward calling of God in Messiah Yeshua.”

TLV

1 John 1:9

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

TLV

Jeremiah 29:11

“For I know the plans that I have in mind for you,” declares Adonai, “plans for shalom and not calamity—to give you a future and a hope.”

TLV

Psalm 94:19

“When my troubling thoughts multiply within me,

Your consolations comfort my soul.”

TLV

Hebrews 12:1

“Therefore, since we have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also get rid of every weight and entangling sin. Let us run with endurance the race set before us,”

TLV

Proverbs 4:25-27

“Let your eyes look directly ahead,

and fix your gaze straight in front of you.

Clear a level path for your feet,

so all your ways will be firm.

Do not turn to the right or to the left.

Divert your foot from evil.”

TLV

Trust in the Peace of God

The will of God is for you to live in His perfect peace. You are a new creation.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says:

Therefore if anyone is in Messiah, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

TLV

The old things have passed away and all things have become new. God’s love has given you a new life. Yes, your old life doesn’t magically disappear and as I said, we have a real enemy who will use it at every turn. But when that happens, God’s Words are there to give you peace and comfort. His powerful Word is there to give you TRUTH to replace the lies.

Letting God lead you in the way you should go can be accomplished through studying His Word, through prayer, and through seeking godly counsel from a pastor or trusted leader.

The next step that I find helpful during times when I am tempted to look back in fear is to keep a journal. When I feel fearful, I journal how I am feeling and what is going on at that time. I then go to the Word and I find scriptures that help me and I write those down too and I meditate upon them and memorize them.

When you journal in this way you can easily spot patterns when you might feel that fear and anxiety and then you can spot when the enemy is coming against you in times of weakness.

The best thing I have found that is so incredibly helpful is taking every thought captive. It is so easy to just let thoughts come and go and, especially when we are busy, it is easy to ignore what thoughts we are allowing in. We need to allow only the thoughts of our good Father in.

Taking every single thought captive can help us stop them from building up and letting the enemy overtake our minds and fill them with fear.

I recommend this course below by Sunshyne Gray, a Licensed Christian Therapist and Certified Biblical Counselor who teaches people new patterns of living and relating that line up with God’s Word and His purpose for their life.

When the enemy rears his ugly head and life gets tough…sink the ships. Share on X

Tree of Life (TLV) – Scripture taken from the Holy Scriptures, Tree of Life Version*. Copyright © 2014,2016 by the Tree of Life Bible Society.  Used by permission of the Tree of Life Bible Society.

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