Pastor John, today's question is a compilation of a number of email questions we've received

in the past, and essentially it boils down to this.

What counsel would you give for listeners who are overly nostalgic and who almost live

in the past?

What are the dangers?

It is possible to sin against God and hurt your own soul by failing to remember the past

and by remembering it in the wrong way.

You can blow it both ways.

You can wreck your life by neglecting the past and you can neglect your life by an excessive

living in the past.

The word nostalgia may point, I think, to something innocent and healthy or something

excessive and unhealthy.

I don't think it's a bad thing, I hope not, to have a fond, wistful memory of college

days.

For me to walk around on Wheaton Campus is a pretty emotional thing.

I frankly find it a kind of painful pleasure.

That would be unhealthy, however, this thing called nostalgia.

If you thought about those past experiences continually and felt burdened by the fact

that they're never going to come again, a kind of paralyzing regret that it's all

over.

The best days are in the past, there's no future like it.

That starts to be unhealthy.

...