Moving Forward with Hope

Isaiah 43:18-19

Introduction:

• These are the moments in life when the past feels louder than the future. Old failures echo. Former seasons tug at us. Even blessings from yesterday can become barriers if we cling to them too tightly. Israel knew that feeling well. They were a people with a long history; some glorious, some painful, but God interrupts their backward gaze with a startling command: “Forget the Former Things.”
• Not because the past did not matter, but because God was not finished. He was writing a new chapter, opening a new path, preparing a new work. And the same God who spoke to Israel speaks to us today.
• Sometimes we stand at the edge of a new season and all we can see is wilderness. But God says, “I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” In other words Where you see impossibility, I see opportunity. Where you see dryness, I see the beginning of rivers. Where you see an ending. I see a beginning.
• This passage invites us to lift our eyes from what was and lean into God is doing now. It is a call to release the weight of yesterday and step forward with expectation. Hope is not wishful thinking; it is confidence that God is already at work in places we have not even stepped into yet. Today, as we open this text, we are not just studying ancient words. We are stepping into a divine invitation: Move Forward. Trust Again. Hope Again. God is doing a new thing.