No One Can Make Any Forward Progress by Looking Back All the Time

If you walk or attempt to walk forward while your attention is toward where you were, rather than where you are headed, you will encounter more obstacles by not noticing them. You would have been able to notice them had your attention been forward rather than backward.

Second-guessing and dwelling on yesterday is something not advised by Scripture.

Yes, we can learn from our mistakes; we have to learn from them, not ignore them.

But Paul wrote, "Forgetting what lies behind, I press toward the mark of the prize for the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

We are to forget the good and the bad and the ugly, not to make our home among them.

We can't go forward unless we are facing in a forward direction.

Yes, sometimes--perhaps often--we have to face up to the bad choices we made--choices we did not foresee the consequences of--but once we have repented and received forgiveness, we must go on from there.

In a class on organization, one point clearly made was that we need to plan ahead, set goals. No one can plan ahead if they insist on looking back, wallowing in regrets, etc. God calls us to learn from our mistakes--even from our sins--and move on from them--forward.

Sometimes "forward" will mean drawing up a variety of plans, depending on how God has things worked out for us.

Sometimes choices in the past will cancel out an option, at least for a while. So? God is still and always sovereign in that also. His will for His children will never be thwarted.

"Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14; NASB).