Gateway Worship Español adds four voices on "Pa'lante"

Four names in a single song say something about worship in Spanish. You don't need a single style or a single accent to sing to the same Lord.

"Pa'lante" is the colloquial way of saying "forward," that word that appears when someone needs to keep walking. In a worship song, the push doesn't come from willpower. It comes from who you're looking at.

Why it's hard for us to let go of the past

There are mistakes you repeat mentally as if recounting them again would change something. A hasty decision, a stage you didn't know how to handle, a relationship that ended badly. The past stays there because we give it a home.

For many young Hispanics there are also two lives that don't always fit together: the culture of home and the culture of school, two languages and two ways of measuring success. Anyone who moved from San Juan to Orlando knows that the suitcase also opens on the inside.

Social media doesn't help. Your neighbor's life looks orderly while yours looks like a draft. And yesterday comes back disguised as comparison.

Scripture doesn't ask for amnesia. It asks for direction. Paul writes it like this: "forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14, ESV). Paul knew what to repent of: he had persecuted the church.

God says it even more directly: "remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old" (Isaiah 43:18, ESV). Later, the same passage promises something new that God himself will do. It is not an order to pretend nothing happened. It is the promise that God is still working.

A concrete step for this week

You can listen to "Pa'lante" on Friday, October 2, and I hope you do. But the song will only be a good start if you do something with it.

Choose one thing from the past you're still dragging around: a message you shouldn't reread, a guilt you already confessed, a comparison with someone you're not. Name it before God and, if it weighs a lot, tell a pastor or a trusted person.

It's not about forcing yourself to forget, but about walking forward with your eyes on Jesus. He doesn't ask you for a clean record; he asks you to follow him today.

What past do you need to let go of this week?