Joel Osteen - Drop It
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Joel Osteen preaches that to live victoriously, we must let go of past hurts, offenses, failures, and disappointments—whether recent or long ago—and move forward, trusting that God has arranged restoration and something better ahead. Drawing from Philippians 3:13 where Paul forgets what lies behind, he urges believers to drop the negative baggage so God can release new opportunities, beauty for ashes, and freedom in the present.
The Weight of Negative Baggage
I want to talk to you today about «Drop It». We all have had negative things happen to us. People did us wrong, the company laid us off, a clerk was rude to us. It’s easy to go through life offended, in self-pity, blaming others, blaming ourselves, even blaming God. And because we’re always looking back, reliving the negative, we end up carrying around all this baggage that weighs us down.
One of the best things we can learn to do is drop it. Let it go, whether it happened twenty years ago or twenty minutes ago. Don’t carry negative baggage from yesterday into today. You won’t live a victorious life if you’re always reliving what didn’t work out, who hurt you, the mistakes you’ve made.
The reason it’s called the past is because it’s over. It’s done, it’s history. Now do your part and let it go.
Don’t Let Others Continue to Hurt You
Well, Joel, they’ve betrayed me, they walked away, broke my heart. That’s why I’m bitter, that’s why I’m upset. Well, they hurt you once—don’t let them continue to hurt you by always thinking about it. As long as you’re dwelling on that, it’s going to keep you from the new things God wants to do.
God said He would give you beauty for those ashes. He said He would pay you back for that injustice. But you have to drop the hurt, quit dwelling on it, quit reliving it, move forward. There is a new beginning in front of you.
But God will not release new opportunities as long as we’re holding on to old hurts, old failures. You may have a lot of negative things in your past. You had a rough childhood, you lost a loved one, your business didn’t make it. You could easily go around with a chip on your shoulder, not trusting anybody, bitter, resentful.
Prepared, Not Defined, by Your Past
But everything you’ve gone through has deposited something on the inside. You’re not defined by your past—you’re prepared by your past. You may not realize it, but you came out stronger, with more confidence, greater experience. If that hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t be prepared for the new levels that are coming your way.
Don’t have that «poor old me, look what I’ve been through» attitude. I’ve heard it said: You can be pitiful or you can be powerful, but you cannot be both.
You may have made a lot of mistakes, you have a lot of regrets. You blew your marriage, didn’t raise your children right. You can’t do anything about yesterday. Living guilty and condemned doesn’t make it any better. You have to drop it.
If you’ll get rid of that negative baggage, you’ll not only feel that heaviness release off of you, but then you’ll step into the new things that God has in store.
Freedom in the Present
The Scripture says where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom—not where the Spirit of the Lord was. If you’re always thinking about yesterday, last month, last year, there’s no freedom there. That’s where the Spirit of the Lord was.
This is a new day. There are new victories, new opportunities, new relationships. Quit living in what was and come over into what is. Right now there is freedom for you. Right now there are new beginnings: joy, peace, victory.
Crying over what happened yesterday doesn’t bring freedom. Living in regrets of what you could have been, what you should have done, doesn’t do anything productive. Being offended, angry, upset over what didn’t work out will only keep you in mediocrity. It’s time to drop it and move forward.
God Has Already Arranged a Comeback
You may be a product of your past, but you don’t have to be a prisoner of your past. Nothing that’s happened to you is a surprise to God. Before He laid out the plan for your life, He already knew every person who would hurt you, every mistake you would make, every loss you would go through.
And the good news is: for every setback, God has already arranged a comeback; for every disappointment, a new beginning; for every failure, restoration; for all the ashes, He has beauty.
You have to put your foot down and say, «That’s it. I may have gone through some disappointments, I may have made some mistakes, but I’m not going to waste the time I have left worried about what I could have done better, bitter over who hurt me, upset over what didn’t work out.»
«I’m stepping out of the was and I’m coming over into the is. I’m dropping the offense, dropping the guilt, dropping the failure, dropping the hurt. I’m not living my life with any more baggage. I’m going to live my life free.»
Give It to God and Receive Mercy
Here’s the key: If somebody hurts you, if you’ll give it to God, He’ll be your vindicator. Or if you’ve made mistakes—and we all have—quit beating yourself up and receive God’s mercy. It’s new every morning.
If there are some things you don’t understand—you worked hard but you didn’t get the promotion; you did your best but your marriage didn’t make it—instead of carrying around that baggage, you have to be mature enough to say, «God, I don’t understand it, but I trust You. I’m not going to live bitter. I’m not going to go through life looking in my rearview mirror. I’m going to keep moving forward, knowing that my best days are still up ahead.»
Ecclesiastes says better is the end than the beginning. You may have had a rough start, but you don’t have to have a rough finish. Better is the end.
Something Better Is Coming
Maybe you went through a disappointment. Somebody broke your heart, the medical report wasn’t good. Don’t get stuck on what happened yesterday. God is saying something better is coming.
There may be some rough places in the middle, but don’t stay focused on the betrayal. Better is coming. The loan didn’t go through—don’t go around in self-pity. Better is coming.
You prayed and believed, but the medical report wasn’t good. That’s one report, but God has another report. He says something better is coming now.
Don’t cancel out the better by living in yesterday, reliving your hurts, your failures, the disappointments. If your mind is always in yesterday, you’re going to move in that direction. You can’t go forward looking backwards.
If you’re always thinking about who hurt you, what didn’t work out, reliving your failures, calling people telling them how bad the medical report is, you’re going to get stuck.
Receive this into your spirit: Better is coming. Joy is coming, healing is coming, breakthroughs are coming, victory is coming.
Forgetting What Lies Behind
Paul said it this way in Philippians: «I focus all of my energies on this one thing: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead.»
Here’s a man who wrote almost half of the New Testament. He could have said, «I focus all of my energies on being a better writer, on developing my leadership skills, on impacting the culture in a greater way.» He said, in effect, what’s more important than all of that is forgetting what lies behind.
He knew if we went through life carrying negative baggage, we would miss our destiny. And Paul had a lot of adversities. He was falsely accused and put in prison, he was beaten with rods, shipwrecked, gone without food and shelter—on and on.
If he had not learned this principle, he would have become bitter, angry: «God, why is this happening to me? It’s not fair.»
He felt it so strongly. One translation of that verse: «I have not attained it all yet, but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind.» He was saying, «I’m not all I should be, but one thing I have down, one thing I’m good at: I know how to let go of the past.» He was an expert at dropping it.
Stop Reliving the Negative
But sometimes we spend more energy holding onto the negative than we do letting it go. What if we were to do like Paul and start focusing our energies on moving forward: dropping the offense, dropping the guilt, dropping the hurt?
How do you drop it? Stop thinking about it and stop talking about it. Don’t relive the negative things that have happened to you.
The reason some people never see the better is because they’re always opening up old wounds. Every week they call their friends: «Can you believe what they did to me?» That happened twenty-seven years ago. They’re still dragging it up like it happened yesterday.
If you’re going to get free, you need to not only drop it—you need to bury it. Have a funeral for it, put it away once and for all. Make a decision: You’re not going to talk about it another time. When you’re tempted to, just zip it up.
That betrayal, that failure, that disappointment is dead. You buried it, you had a funeral. It’s over, it’s done, it’s in the past now.
If you go dig it up, it’s going to stink. It’s not only going to make your life sour, but nobody’s going to want to be around you when you carry around stinky stuff.
The Stink of Bitterness
You may not realize it, but that makes you unpleasant. When you’re bitter, you push people away. When you’re offended, angry, living guilty, it pushes opportunities away. You have to get the stink out of your life—leave the baggage.
A couple of months ago, I was coming home from a Night of Hope. We leave on Thursdays and come home Friday night. After the event, I had forgotten to pack an extra pair of socks, so I put my socks on Thursday morning. We traveled to that city and did a book signing that night, had a lot of activity, got up the next morning—didn’t have time to go to the store—so put my same socks back on.
That afternoon I worked out and perspired, and that night did the three-hour Night of Hope, shook hundreds of hands. Afterwards, when I got on the plane to come back home that Friday night, I was so tired, and I took my shoes off just so I could rest a little bit and put my head back.
About ten or fifteen minutes later, Victoria came back to where I was sitting. She said, «What in the world is that smell? It’s so bad back here.» She saw I had my shoes off. She said, «Joel, put your shoes back on. It’s really bad.»
I said, «Oh, my feet don’t stink.» I couldn’t smell anything—I’d been back there ten or fifteen minutes. But here’s my point: Sometimes when we stink, we don’t know it.
When we carry around bitterness, unforgiveness, guilt, angry at our neighbor—you may not realize it, but that’s stinking up your life. That’s pushing people and opportunities away. Why don’t you get the stinky stuff out?
There’s an amazing future in front of you. There’s beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, dancing for heaviness. But you gotta move forward.
Bury the Past Mistakes
Maybe you need to bury a mistake that you’ve made. You’ve lived guilty, condemned, down on yourself long enough—have a funeral for it and put it behind you. No more talking about it, no more letting the accuser convince you that you’re just a failure, you don’t deserve to be blessed, you’re unworthy.
Those lies will stink up your life. Don’t let the defeat play in your mind. When the failure, the mistake, the guilt, the disappointment comes back up on the movie screen of your mind, do yourself a favor: change the channel.
Have the attitude: «I’m not going backwards. I’m not living in regrets. I’m not rehearsing my failures. I’m moving forward. I may have made some mistakes, but I’ve got a promise: Better is the end.»
If you’ll get your mind going forward, your life will go forward.
How much time and energy are you giving to the negative things of your past: hurts, wounds, failures, disappointments? You only have so much emotional energy each day. When you’re spending that energy on negative things—calling a friend, talking about how bad somebody treated you, reliving your failures, down on yourself—that’s energy you should be using to move forward.
You have to come out of what was and come into what is. Don’t say another word about that breakup, that disappointment you went through. Don’t tell another person about the mistake you made. That’s over and done. You buried it, you had a funeral. Now don’t talk about it anymore.
You can’t have your mind in yesterday and expect to go forward.
Drop It, Leave It, Let It Go
The truth is, every person has baggage. We all have things that could cause us to be bitter and live with a heaviness. The difference between the people who are positive, happy, expecting good things and people that are bitter, discouraged, negative is that the second group—they hold on to all the baggage. The first group have learned this principle: to drop it, to let it go.
Mark chapter eleven, Jesus was talking about what we should do when somebody does us wrong. He said in the Amplified Version: «Forgive them and let it drop, leave it, and let it go.»
Notice the principle: drop it, leave it, and let it go. Maybe somebody’s talking about you, trying to make you look bad. You could easily be upset, offended, try to pay them back. Why don’t you try a different approach? Drop it, leave it, and let it go. God will fight your battles.
Well, they betrayed me, they walked away. Don’t waste another minute being bitter. Drop it, leave it, let it go.
You took a step of faith, but it didn’t work out. The business didn’t make it. You could easily be sour. No—three simple things: drop it, leave it, let it go.
The reason it says «leave it» is because you’ll be tempted to go pick it back up. You may drop it at first—and that’s good, that’s the right thing—but tomorrow morning when you think about what they said, how rude they were, you want to pick up the hurt, pick up the bitterness.
I know people that have been picking up the same offense for forty-seven years. It’s no longer a bag—it’s attached to them. It’s a part of who they are. You have to leave it.
It may not have been fair, but God saw what happened. He is a God of justice. He’s promised that He will make your wrongs right. When you leave it, that doesn’t mean that you’re weak, you’re giving up, you don’t care what they did to you. No—you’re saying, «God, I trust You to be my vindicator. I trust You to open the right doors. I trust You to get me to where I’m supposed to be.»
The Tragedy of Ahithophel
Maybe at ten o’clock in the morning a coworker is rude to you. You drop it, leave it, and let it go. But when you see them at noon again, you’re going to be tempted to pick it back up. Just say, «No thanks. I’m leaving that offense where I dropped it. I’m not carrying any negative baggage.»
But so many people are just the opposite. Somebody cuts them off in traffic at eight in the morning—at noon they’re still upset. Instead of dropping it and leaving it, they keep picking it back up again and again, put it in their bag, take it wherever they go.
Friends, life is too short to carry around negative baggage. Your destiny is too important. Your time is too valuable to go through the day weighted down by offense, by guilt, by disappointments, by hurts.
You have to make this decision: to not only drop it but to leave it. Don’t give in to the temptation to pick it back up.
There was a man in the Scripture by the name of Ahithophel. He was one of King David’s right-hand men for over twenty-five years. He served as an advisor and close counselor to David.
But when David’s son Absalom made an attempt to take the throne, Ahithophel was one of the first ones to desert David and go with his son. He started by telling Absalom what he should do to overthrow his father.
Well, this revolt wasn’t successful. Eventually Absalom was killed, and the Scripture says that Ahithophel was so distraught that he went out and hanged himself.
But why would a trusted adviser of King David for so many years suddenly turn on him? Ahithophel was the grandfather of a lady named Bathsheba. She was the woman that David had an affair with and had her husband Uriah killed. Then David took her as his wife.
Could it be that Ahithophel turned on David so quickly because he never got over what David did to Bathsheba and to Uriah? Instead of forgiving David, dropping it, leaving it, letting it go—all those years that poison was simmering on the inside.
On the outside he looked fine, everything looked like it was okay. He was advising King David. But on the inside, something wasn’t right. Tragically, he ended up taking his own life.
And of course, what David did was wrong. Ahithophel in the natural at least had a reason to be bitter, angry, upset. But when you carry around negative baggage year after year, you’re not harming the other person—it’s contaminating your own life.
You won’t have the creativity, the blessing, the favor that you should. Like Ahithophel, what they did to you may have been wrong, it may not be easy. But for your sake, not theirs, you need to drop it, leave it, let it go.
When you do, God will heal your hurts. God will restore your broken places. God will pay you back for the injustice. But when you hold on to bitterness, unforgiveness, guilt—actually, you’re not holding it, but it’s holding you. That poison will lead you down the wrong path.
Ahithophel had everything going for him: a successful career working for the king, respected. But because he wouldn’t deal with his negative baggage, he missed his destiny. It cost him his life. Don’t let that be you.
Don’t play games with negative baggage: bitterness, unforgiveness, guilt. Drop it and let it go.
Trusting God with Unanswered Questions
Well, Joel, I don’t understand why this happened to me. Why did these people do me wrong? Why did I come down with this illness? People ask me, «Why did your mother get healed and my mother didn’t?»
We’re never going to understand everything. Don’t get caught up in the whys of life. The Scripture says we see in part now, like looking through a glass dimly, but one day we will see in full. One day it will be clear.
But if you’re always trying to figure out why everything happens, you’re going to end up bitter, frustrated. The best thing you can do is just leave it alone. If God wants you to understand why—He’s God—He’ll tell you why. But if He’s not revealing that to you, you need to be smart enough to let it go.
Some things God doesn’t want us to know. The Scripture says it is God’s privilege to conceal things. If you’re going to trust God, you have to accept that there are going to be unanswered questions.
We have to be big enough to say, «God, I don’t understand why this happened, but I’m okay with not understanding why. I don’t have to have all the answers. You’re God and I’m not. I trust that Your plans for me are for good, that You know what You’re doing.»
Not Exchanging What We Know for What We Don’t
Good friends of mine pastor a church in another city, and one night their teenage son was tragically killed in an automobile accident. As you can imagine, they were so heartbroken, devastated. Overnight their world came crashing down. And they’re great people, strong believers, but I didn’t know how they would respond.
A lot of people get bitter, angry, blame God, let it ruin the rest of their life. It wasn’t easy. They went through a dark time, but they came through it. And I asked them how they did it without becoming bitter.
They said, «We made a decision that we weren’t going to exchange what we do know for what we don’t know. What we do know is God is good, that He’s for us, that He’s loving, that He’s merciful. We weren’t going to let that one situation that we didn’t understand cancel all that out.»
Maybe you’ve gone through some things that don’t make sense. It’s bothering you, causing you to be bitter, discouraged, upset. You need to do what they did: Quit trying to figure it all out and go back to what you do know.
You do know God has you in the palm of His hand. You do know God wouldn’t have allowed it if somehow, some way, He wasn’t going to bring good out of it.
The truth is, everything is not going to fit perfectly into our theology. We all need to have a file in our thinking called an «I don’t understand it» file. When something comes up that doesn’t make sense, you can’t find an answer to—instead of getting bitter, frustrated—just put it in your «I don’t understand it» file and keep moving forward.
If you make the mistake of going through life trying to figure out why everything happened—why did I get sick, why would my loved one not make it—that’s going to poison your future.
Leave Some Things Alone
When James Garfield was elected the twentieth president of the United States, six months later he was shot in the back. The doctors were able to save his life, but they couldn’t find the bullet. He was recovering just fine, but back in those days they thought if they didn’t remove the bullet, it would cause problems later on, so they did more surgeries, probing all around—still couldn’t find it.
Alexander Graham Bell developed an electrical device hoping to locate it—that wasn’t successful. Two months later, President Garfield died—not from the original gunshot wound, but from the infection that came from all the probing around.
Sometimes it’s better to leave things alone. If you’re always probing around your hurts, your wounds, your failures—because you’re keeping it so stirred up—you’re never going to get well.
You have to turn it over to God. Say, «God, I don’t understand it, but I’m not going to keep probing all around. God, I trust You. My life is in Your hands.»
I’m asking you to quit looking back. God wants to do something new, but you have to let go of the old.
Don’t be like Ahithophel and hold onto things that are going to poison your future. Do like the apostle Paul: focus your energies on forgetting what lies behind.
There’s something you need to drop: an offense, a hurt, a failure. There’s no better time than now. Today can be a turning point.
Make this decision with me: You’re going to get rid of your negative baggage. You’re not only going to drop it, but you’re going to leave it.
If you’ll do this, I believe and declare God is going to give you beauty for ashes. He’s going to heal your hurts. Like Ecclesiastes says, something better is coming. Joy is coming, favor is coming, the fullness of your destiny—in Jesus' name.
And if you receive it, can you say amen today?