How many circumnstances are there which try to stop the race christians have set before them! How many past experiences keep on manipulating their heart, preventing them from enjoying fully the blessings that the present time brings from day to day! We could call such cases: Lives "on hold"_ Lives halted by a past experience, which they could not accept, turning it into a permanent and chronic crisis. This usually happens to those who have not known JESUS Christ, but christians must be aware that such a thing might never happen in our lives.

Brother Nicky Cruz tells in one of his books, that, next to his apartment lived an old woman whom he heard crying every night. He was curious about this and wanted to know the reason of her weeping always at the same hour. One day he decided to visit her, and that day he got to know the whole story of the woman and the cause of her deep and intense affliction. She told him that she was jewish and that all members of her family were assassinated. She could never forget such painful experience that had occurred many years ago. He talked to her about God's love   hoping that she could forgive her enemies, so she could be set free from that past that had halted her ... but the bitterness had taken possession of her heart very deeply. Some time after that, the weeping of the woman was not heard again; she had passed away forever; her grief ended with her life. She lived all her life bound to the past, and in that same condition she died.

The manifestation of such a wound was: weeping; there are other ways of expressing those feelings that have turned into bitterness and that harm seriously those hearts bound by the past: outbursts of wrath, vengeance, jealousy, envy, etc.

There was once a lady, that, having lost her dream for a man, who had married his fiancee, decided to capture the object of her illusion no matter what. She managed how to get to him and planned a pregnancy hoping that an offspring would unite them. Her plan to have a child was achieved, giving an almost fatal blow to that family, but ... here is where her crisis took place and began, the consequences for letting her deceitful heart full of bitterness guide her. Tongues began to gossip In the city she lived, as it always happens in cases like this, and some people began to say that another man could be the father of her child. When the wife of this man, whom she had forgiven, heard of this comments, she told her husband to be alert and make sure that this child was his. This resulted in a lawsuit in the court, which, after laboratory tests, it was determined that he was the father of the child.

The woman got obsessed against the wife of this man believing that she had been the responsilble one for beginning the gossip in their town to preserve her marriage. The Word of God states in Hebrews 12:15, "lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled". Not only the person full of bitterness is effected, but all those with whom he or she shares his or her version of the situation are defiled. Her thirst for revenge without a cause or foundation, manifested by her own feeling of failure, has taken this woman to exist and not to live. JESUS, who taught us to love and forgive in the cross, is the life. Anyone that has not given the heart to JESUS does'nt live but exists.

Conclussion: As in the first case, this woman also put on hold her life from that moment on; she made a permanent stop in her life which had taken her to live all her life around her past, persecuting along the years a family that had nothing to do with her mistake and whom God has protected from all attack of the enemies, because they are honest and clean in His sight. But there's still hope for her; God can and wants to make a miracle in her heart.

How different the case of Joseph, the son of Jacob! who had been sold by his own brothers, and despite of his trials and sufferings he could overcome every negative feeling, because God was with him. God protects his people and no matter the struggles that arise, behind each one there's a victory for sure.

To Joseph were born two sons:   he called the name of the firstborn,  Manasseh: "For God has made me forget all my toil and all my father's house." And the name of the second he called Ephraim; "For God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction." GENESIS 41:51-52

There are two important points in this chapter of Joseph's life that made a difference:
1.He could forgive and forget, and as a result, 2. he received fruits from God in the land of his affliction. He was an instrument of God so that the divine plan could be fulfilled and bless those that had been the cause of his suffering. Blessed be God's perfect love and his infinite mercy! How great the peace and joy he felt when he met his brothers after many years and realized that he had been set free from all his affliction and grief; that he did'nt feel hate but love for them! What a big difference makes forgiveness and how great the peace it causes!

May the Lord help us to forget all past and prepare our hearts to want to enjoy each day without obstacles. May He teaches us to see each experience, no matter how negative it seems to be, as an opportunity to go forward toward the goal, not allowing ourselves to stop for any reason.

"Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, Looking unto JESUS, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and had set down at the right hand of the throne of God." HEBREWS 12:1-2