Pastor John, today's question is a compilation of a number of email questions we've received in the past, and essentially it boils down to this. What counsel would you give for listeners who are overly nostalgic and who almost live in the past? What are the dangers? It is possible to sin against God and hurt your own soul by failing to remember the past and by remembering it in the wrong way.

In other words, you can blow it both ways. You can wreck your life by neglecting the past, and you can neglect your life by an excessive living in the past. The word "nostalgia" may point, I think, to something innocent and healthy or something excessive and unhealthy. I don't think it's a bad thing—I hope not—to have a fond, wistful memory of college days.

For me to walk around on Wheaton campus is a pretty emotional thing. I frankly find it a kind of painful pleasure. It would be unhealthy, however, this thing called nostalgia, if you thought about those past experiences continually and felt burdened by the fact that they're never going to come again, a kind of paralyzing regret that it's all over and the best days are in the past.

There's no future like it. I mean, that starts to be unhealthy. So what we need, I think, is a biblical vision, or you might even call it a theology, of the past. The past is not for fueling and paralyzing regret and disappointment. The past is not meant for fueling anger and grudges.

A lot of people use the past for regret and use the past for disappointment and use the past for grudges and use the past for anger. Those are all misuses of the past. That's not what the past is for. God didn't give us the past to make us regretful and to paralyze us with disappointment or rage or grudge.

There are positive uses of the past that He did ordain. And let me just mention four. Gratitude, repentance, faith, and knowledge or wisdom. So gratitude, Psalm 107. "Let them thank the Lord for His steadfast love, for His wondrous works to the children of man. I will remember the deeds of the Lord.

Yes, I will remember your wonders of old," Psalm 77. Remember the wondrous works that He has done, His miracles and judgments that He uttered, 1 Chronicles 16. In other words, history is an ever-growing reservoir of past grace where the thankfulness of our hearts can drink and drink with continual pleasure.

That's what it's for, the drinking of thankfulness. And when I say past, I mean five seconds ago to 5,000 years ago. It's all past. Here's number two. The past is a source of healthy repentance. Ephesians 2.12. "Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise.

You had no hope and were without God in the world." Isn't it amazing that He told us to remember that? I just think that's amazing. I mean, don't we want to forget that? No, we don't want to forget that. Because if we forget from what we were saved, our sense of repentance will be shallow and our enjoyment of grace will be thin.

So it was a healthy remembering that Paul was calling the Ephesians to do for the sake of a healthy repenting. He said in 2 Corinthians 7, "Godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death." In other words, there is a way to think about your past that leads to repentance, leads to salvation, leads to life, leads to joy, through and beyond regret.

And there's a worldly way to think about the past that paralyzes you and brings death. Third, the past is a source of faith for the future. My favorite verse, perhaps, in all the Bible is Romans 8.32. "He who did," that's past, "did not spare his own son, but gave," past, "himself up for us all." And here comes the logic.

"How will," that's future, "how will he not with him graciously give us all things?" Oh, I love the logic of that verse. Because of our focus on the past, namely God's willingness in history to give his son, therefore our faith is undaunted for the reception of all of his promises in the future.

The past serves the future by feeding faith because of all the faithful works of God to make a future for us in the past. Israel failed precisely to do this, and that's why they were undone in the wilderness. Psalm 106, "Our fathers, when they were in Egypt, did not consider your wondrous works." They did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love, but rebelled at the sea.

Why did they rebel? They didn't remember. They didn't remember so they didn't have faith to walk with Moses through the sea the way they should have. And they grumbled on the other side. All of it was rooted in forgetting past grace, so they didn't trust him for future grace because they didn't remember past grace.

And number four, the last one, this is kind of a theology of past. It's my understanding of what I'm doing here. It's a mini theology of the past. The past is a great reservoir of knowledge and wisdom. Where else can we learn anything except from the past? The future has not happened yet.

You can't learn anything from what hasn't happened yet. The present is ephemeral. I mean, try to learn something from the present. I mean, try to focus on the present. As soon as you got the present focused, it's the past. I mean, every millisecond is flowing over the waterfall of the present, turning into a past reservoir just as soon as you see it go over the waterfall.

As soon as you focus on a moment, it's become a past moment. The only thing we can focus on that has any stability at all are the products of the past. All books are from the past. All videos are from the past. All recordings are from the past. And this sentence that I just quoted, "All recordings are from the past," is now past.

All the means of stored knowledge and wisdom are from the past. It's the only place we have to go to learn anything or to grow in knowledge or in wisdom. So, for the Christian, that means mainly the Bible, which was, like all other books written, in the past. So, for the Christian, let it be said, "The best is always yet to come." And I really mean that.

I mean, for eternity, starting right now, the best is always yet to come for the Christian. So, the future is massively important. We are people of hope, and therefore we do not live in the past. We draw thankfulness from the past. We draw life-giving repentance from the past. We feed our faith and hope on the faithfulness of God in the past.

And we learn everything we know and get all the wisdom we have from the past. But all of it is for the sake of this afternoon's joy and this afternoon's faith and this afternoon's obedience and the joy of all eternity. Beautiful. Thank you, Pastor John. "The best is yet to come." And to flip this discussion around for more on how grace works out in the future, go to DesiringGod.org, click on the Books tab, and find the book that's titled "Future Grace." "Future Grace" is one of the essential reads from John Piper, in my opinion.

And you'll find it on our website, DesiringGod.org. Click on the Books tab and look for the title "Future Grace." Tomorrow we return with one of the most frequently asked questions that we have not yet addressed on the podcast, "Do pets go to heaven?" I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you tomorrow.

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