Sunday my pastor half jokingly, still serious, finished the service out saying that revelation comes from the Word of God, through prayer, through fellowship with the Holy Spirt, through others, and through circumstances around us. He said he had even had revelation for roadkill. He prayed that we would all have revelation from roadkill. Not wasting any time, God showed me three things.
Roadkill is dead, it is the past. Generally speaking we don’t stop and take the time to pick it up or clean it up. We leave it where we hit it. Nature or roadside workers will generally remove the carcass. We drive on past and don’t give much thought other than damage it might have caused our vehicle.
As believers, our past needs to be left where it happened. We don’t need to pick it up and carry it with us. We don’t need to try to clean it up, that is truly the Holy Sprit's role as we put on the new man. We need to tend to the damage, and find healing. Then we need to go on our way.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” II Corinthians 5:17
“Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,” Philippians 3:13
“But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” Ephesians 4:20-24
“Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.”Colossians 3:9-11
Bag it and bury it. I know that I have picked up roadkill before. Our dog was killed down the road after getting out. We put him in a bag and buried him.
If there is roadkill in our life that we have picked up and brought with us, for whatever reason, it needs to be buried or trashed. We were never meant to carry it. It’s okay to mourn what could have been or what happened, but then we need to move along.
It might end up on display. Every now and then someone might have some road kill like a deer where the antlers or skull are worth taking with them. It gets dried out and displayed.
There are parts of our past that God will eventually put on display. We have to allow those areas to dry out and give our testimony of what the Lord has done. We tell the story of what happened, but it is for other’s benefit, not because we are carrying it around showing the victimization.
I think that is the difference. When we try to carry around the roadkill of our past, we are playing the victim. It caused us pain and trouble. We are carrying around the disgusting, rotting, road kill. When we get to the point that we can let it go, we may show the carcass, but it’s a story of overcoming. We kept going despite the pain and trouble. We are no longer saying “look at this terrible part of my past.” Instead it is a message of hope “God saved me from this and if He did it for me, He can do it for you.”
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