Forget

I know I’m not the only one—you forget things too, don’t you?  I forget stuff every day.  At this very moment I’m trying to remember where I left my brand-new Red Sox baseball cap!  And my car keys are “mislaid” about once every month or so.  Forgetting seems easy, something I’m getting pretty good at.  But there is a kind of forgetting that isn’t that easy.  I’m thinking of the apostle Paul’s challenge “…to forget what is behind and strain toward what is ahead…”  (Philippians 3:13 )

Paul is sharing his personal goal of wanting to possess everything that God has for him.  To experience that, he realizes that there are some things he must forget.

You might remember that he had been a Pharisee for several years.  He was convinced that those Jews who believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah were dead wrong and ought to be forced to renounce their heresy.  If you took the time to read Paul’s testimony before King Agrippa in Acts 26 , you would read of a man who had actually persecuted the young church.  No wonder he seeks to forget the past.

I haven’t actually hauled people to prison as Paul did, but I must confess that there are some things that I have difficulty forgetting.  A painful memory, a thoughtless remark, a regret, a failure, a missed opportunity, a wrong done to me, a sin long repented of—all these can be remembered in vivid detail.

Satan, our spiritual enemy, doesn’t want us to forget such things.  He wants to remind us of our failures and bad choices, our poorly chosen words and lost opportunities, but—and get this—we may have trouble forgetting some things, but God doesn’t.  God is the perfect forgetter!

As far as the east is from the west so far has he removed our transgression from us.

-Psalm 103:12

I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remember your sins no more.                                                                                        -Isaiah 43:25

For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.

-Jeremiah 31:34

You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl

all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.                                        -Micah 7:19

A man confessed his sin to God, but was continually haunted by the memory.  The next day he confessed his sin to God again.  God replied, “What sin?”

Move forward friend, God welcomes you into the future.

R.A.W.