How Do I Let Go of the Past and Start Over in Life?

Maybe your life fell apart. The plan you built everything around didn't work out. Or maybe you made a choice you would give anything to take back.

Now you can't stop replaying it. You want to let go of the past and start over, but you don't know how.

Here is the good news: God wants to do a new thing in your life.

I preached a message from Isaiah 43 called "New Thing" when our church was stepping into a new season. The video below starts right where I talk about how to move on from the past.

Learn from your past, but don't live in it.

There is a reason why your rearview mirror is so small and your windshield is so big. When you are driving, you are meant to look forward most of the time. It is the same in life.

Imagine trying to drive on the freeway while only looking at your rearview mirror. How would that turn out? Not very well! You would hurt yourself and others.

Unfortunately, that is how many of us live our lives. We replay our mistakes and disappointments over and over again in our minds. But when you try to move forward while looking backward, you crash.

Now, I am not saying you should erase your past from your memory. There are times when it is important to look back so you can learn lessons from your past. However, I have found that we can often suffer from a paralysis that comes from an over-analysis of the past. We think about it so much that we can't move.

God wants you to learn from your past, but He does not want you to live in it.

God tells you not to dwell on the past.

Here is what God told His people through the prophet Isaiah:

"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." (Isaiah 43:18-19, NIV)

Notice the words "do not dwell." To dwell somewhere is to live there. The past is not where you are supposed to live, because God has a future ahead of you.

I want to be clear. Moving on from the past does not mean you dishonor it. You can be thankful for what was good, and you can learn from what was hard. You just can't stay there.

Let me be honest with you. Moving on is not easy. It is uncomfortable, because we are creatures of habit. We get used to the same places and the same people, and we get comfortable.

It is also easy to get sentimental about the past. We can make it look better than it really was, and because we are so attached to it, we won't let it go. But God does not want you to be driven by sentimental feelings. He wants you to be driven by faith in Him and in the future He is calling you to.

Change is always painful. So here is what you have to decide. Are you willing to go through the pain to get to the new, or will you stay where things feel familiar? For a lot of people, it is easier to stay on the comfortable couch of what's normal than to get up and move toward something new.

If you are still grieving what you lost, you may also want to read how to get to your next chapter.

God is doing a new thing, and He can make a way.

Look at the word God uses in that verse: "perceive." To perceive something is to notice it. God is doing something new, and He is asking if you see it.

My greatest fear for you is that you would miss it. You could let the new thing God is inviting you into pass you by and stay stuck in the past.

Then God says He is "making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." Is a desert a likely place for a river? Not really. Maybe rebuilding your life feels impossible right now. In your own strength, it is. But God can make a way when it seems like there is no way.

That promise is why our church is called Arroyo. An arroyo is a river in the desert. In fact, the ESV translation of this verse says "rivers in the desert" (Isaiah 43:19, ESV). I believe God still makes rivers in the desert, and He can do it in your life too.

You can trust God with what comes next.

Stepping into something new will force you to live by faith. When you feel like you can control a situation, you are not trusting God. You are trusting yourself. But a new season comes with unknowns, and you won't understand all of it. God is asking you to trust Him anyway.

And you can trust Him, because He is trustworthy. If God did not have a track record of proving Himself faithful, I would understand your doubts. But He has proven Himself faithful time and time again.

Look at how God describes Himself just before He promises a new thing. He is the one "who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters" (Isaiah 43:16, NIV). He is talking about the time He parted the Red Sea to rescue His people from Egypt's army. So when God promises "a way in the wilderness," it is not an empty promise. If He has done it before, don't you think He will do it again?

If His guidance and provision were with you a week ago, they will be with you a year from now. Where God guides, He always provides. That doesn't mean the new season will always be comfortable or easy. It means God is with you in it, and He is for you in it.

He has a great plan for your life! He has good works that He "prepared in advance" for you to do (Ephesians 2:10, NIV). Even more importantly, if you have placed your faith in Jesus, He has secured a home in heaven for you. That is the brightest future anyone could ever hope for.

What I have found in life is that you just take the first step of faith. Then you trust God to help you keep taking the next steps.

God does not hold your past against you.

Maybe part of what you keep replaying is something you did. I want you to know that God can forgive you for everything in your past. When you place your faith in Jesus, He does not hold your past against you. A few verses after God promises a new thing, He says this:

"I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more." (Isaiah 43:25, NIV)

To blot something out is to wipe it away. Your transgressions are the wrong things you have done. When God forgives you, He remembers your sins no more.

That is the good news of the gospel: you get to move on from your past. Sometimes going through the most painful things brings the most beautiful life, and that is what happened on the cross. Jesus went through the ultimate pain when He died for your sins, and from that came resurrection life!

The Bible says, "if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" (2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV). That is a new beginning only Jesus can give. If guilt is what keeps pulling you backward, read why no sin is bigger than God's grace.

Today, you can stop letting your past weigh you down. Rest in God's forgiveness, and take one step toward the new thing He is doing.

Daily Practice: Read Isaiah 43:18-19 out loud. Then write down one thing from your past that you keep replaying, and one thing God may want you to learn from it. Pray something like this: "God, I will learn from this, but I will not live in it. Help me see the new thing You are doing."

If you are hurting and don't know where to start, reach out to us. We would love to pray for you. And if the weight of your past ever makes you feel like you can't go on, please call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, any time.

What to Do When You Feel Spiritually Stuck | Philippians 3 Sermon in Livermore, CA

• Table of Contents:

  • Understanding that growth with Jesus is a process

  • Living with the right perspective

  • Holding on to the progress God has already built

  • Finding spiritual parents and mentors

  • Setting your mind on heaven, not just earth

It is hard to be stuck anywhere you never wanted to be in the first place. That feeling is frustrating in a parking garage, on the side of the road, or in a long season of uncertainty. But it is even heavier when the place you feel stuck is spiritual.

Maybe you feel stuck in anxious thought patterns. Maybe you are stuck in a relationship cycle that keeps breaking trust and peace. Maybe you are stuck in a habit, temptation, or sin that you keep returning to even though you desperately want freedom. The reality is that most people do not want to stay stuck, but many do not know how to get unstuck.

In this message from Philippians 3:10–21, Arroyo Church walks through five practical, biblical steps for what to do when you feel spiritually stuck. This is not a message about trying harder in your own strength. It is a message about pursuing Jesus, trusting His grace, and moving forward with unstoppable joy.

For anyone looking for a church in Livermore CA or searching for hope in the spiritual desert of the Bay Area, this message offers both truth and encouragement: God does not leave you stuck where He found you.

1. Pursuing Jesus is a process
One of the most freeing truths in this passage is that spiritual growth is not instant. The Apostle Paul says he wants to know Christ more deeply, even though he already knows Him. Paul had planted churches, preached the gospel boldly, and lived with remarkable faithfulness, yet he still said he had not reached perfection.
That matters because it means your growth in Christ is also a process.
Following Jesus is not a one-time emotional moment and then automatic maturity. Yes, when you trust in Christ, you are forgiven, made right with God, and welcomed into His family. But after that begins the lifelong journey of knowing Him more deeply. Growth takes time because we still live in a broken world, surrounded by brokenness, inside bodies that still wrestle with sin.
Sometimes growth is dramatic. Sometimes it is slow and hidden, like roots growing under the surface before anything visible appears. Some days you will feel strong. Other days you may feel stagnant. But none of that means God has abandoned His work in you.
The good news is that God is patient in the process. He does not walk away when you stumble. He does not stop loving you when growth feels slow. His patience is not permission to stay passive, but it is a reminder that failure is not the end of your story.
Real change begins when you stop pursuing Jesus out of guilt and start pursuing Him because He first loved you. That is the heartbeat of the gospel.
2. Live with the proper perspective
Paul says he is forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. That does not mean pretending the past never happened. It means refusing to let your past define your future.
Many people stay spiritually stuck because they live mentally anchored to old shame, old failures, old wounds, and old patterns. The enemy loves to keep replaying what was. God, however, keeps calling you toward what can be through His grace.
Maybe your past includes a fractured marriage, financial mistakes, addiction, regret, or years of spiritual drift. Those things are real. They should be acknowledged honestly. But they should not become the controlling narrative of your life.
When your focus stays on the past, you move backward. When your focus shifts to the future God has for you, you begin to move forward.
This is especially important in a region like the Bay Area, where many people are carrying quiet exhaustion, private discouragement, and deep spiritual hunger under outward success. God’s mercy is new every morning. In the middle of the spiritual desert, He is still making a way forward.
3. Do not lose the progress you have already made
Paul gives a simple but powerful instruction: hold on to the progress you have already made.
That is such an important word for anyone in a discouraging season. Feeling stuck can tempt you not only to stop moving forward, but to start sliding backward. When you are tired, disappointed, or spiritually numb, it can become easy to think, “Why keep trying?” That is often when old habits start calling your name again.
But one bad day does not need to become a destructive turning point.
There are seasons when thriving feels natural, and there are seasons when simply surviving with faithfulness is a victory. In those moments, do not underestimate the value of staying grounded. Keep praying. Keep showing up. Keep worshiping. Keep saying yes to the small acts of obedience that protect what God has already built in your life.
The enemy would love to convince you that because growth feels slow, your progress does not matter. But it does matter. Hold your ground in Christ.
4. Get spiritual parents
Paul tells the church to follow his example and learn from others who are faithfully walking with Jesus. That is a reminder that we were never meant to grow alone.
Sometimes the reason you feel stuck is not because God is absent, but because you are trying to navigate a difficult season without wise, godly people around you. We all need spiritual mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters who can encourage us, challenge us, pray for us, and help us take the next step.
This is one of the reasons church community matters so much. Growth often happens in relationships before it is visible anywhere else. When you invite others into your journey, you create space for accountability, comfort, and wisdom.
If you are new to Arroyo, this is a great reminder that church is more than a Sunday service. It is a family. You can learn more through About Arroyo Church or begin connecting through Plan Your Visit.
And if you have been following Jesus for years, this message is also a challenge: become that steady presence for someone else. Someone around you needs a spiritual parent, not just a friendly face.
5. Ponder the right place
Paul contrasts two ways of living. One life is driven by appetite and focused only on the here and now. The other life remembers that our citizenship is in heaven.
This is a powerful key to getting unstuck. What fills your mind will shape your life. When you think only about temporary comfort, immediate gratification, and earthly success, your decisions will be shaped by short-term desires. But when you remember heaven, your perspective changes.
Thinking about heaven does not make you less useful on earth. It makes you more faithful here. It gives you hope in suffering and purpose in everyday life. You remember that pain is not permanent, temptation is not ultimate, and your calling is bigger than simply getting through another week.
As followers of Jesus, we are not just trying to have better habits or cleaner behavior. We are learning to live as citizens of another kingdom. That is how a church becomes a river in the spiritual desert of the Bay Area. When people know the love of Jesus and show the love of Jesus, hope begins to flow outward into homes, neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools.
If you are longing to grow deeper in your walk with Christ, resources like Devotional and community connections through Kids Ministry and other church gatherings can help you keep taking your next step.

If you feel spiritually stuck, the invitation of this message is simple and hopeful: do not stay there. Growth is a process. Your past does not have to define you. Your progress matters. You need godly people around you. And your mind must be fixed on heaven, not just earth.

Most of all, remember this: Jesus meets people in the middle of their mess. He does not wait for you to get unstuck before He loves you. He entered our brokenness, died for our sins, and rose again so that we could be forgiven, restored, and made new.

Where you are weak, He is strong. Where you cannot make a way, He can. And wherever you are today, you can call on His name and find grace for the next step.