Forget It

Not mine...thanks Mel Tunney!


Forget: fail to remember, lose sight of, think no more of, overlook
 
He remembers our sins no more . . . 
Isaiah 43:25 says, “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions, for My own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” And we read in Jeremiah 31:34, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” This is stated in the New Testament as well, in Hebrews 8:12 ~ “For I will forgive their iniquities and will never again remember their sins.”
 
Does that mean that Almighty God actually can’t remember something?  I mean, He is GOD.  Does He have a bad memory?  Of course not! But by His grace, and because of the all-encompassing sacrifice of Jesus, God chooses to forgive and forget.  That is why, when you read Hebrews 11 and you see the champions of faith that are listed there, none of their sins are listed!  People like Moses, Abraham, David are remembered for their faith.
 
Taking that a bit further, in Ephesians 4:32, we are told to forgive as the Father has forgiven us.  So, if someone wrongs us and we tell them they are forgiven, we must do the same.  Remember their sins against them no more.
 
Psalm 103:10-12 says this, in the Message:
“He doesn't treat us as our sins deserve, nor pay us back in full for our wrongs. As high as heaven is over the earth, so strong is his love to those who fear him. And as far as sunrise is from sunset, he has separated us from our sins.”
 
 
Forget the former things . . . 
In Isaiah 43:18-19, we read these words, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” God wants us to let go of the past and look toward what He will do. 
 
In Philippians 3:4-6, Paul lists his spiritual resume.  It’s interesting to note that he’s relaying this information, not to boast, but to acknowledge who he was before meeting Jesus.  Remember, Paul was known as a persecutor of Believers.  He’s not proud of his past, which is why several paragraphs later, he says he will “forget what is behind” and press on toward what God has for him in the days to come.
Phil. 3:12-14 – “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus”.  In my study Bible, the footnote for this section says this, “Paul is not losing all memory of his sinful past, but leaving it behind him as done with and settled.” In other words, if God forgives and forgets, so should we!
 
A story is told of a church who was hiring a new pastor. Evidently, the pastor had a past he was ashamed of, the details of which he was not desirous of sharing. The committee continually tried to dig deeper and find out what he may be trying to hide. One member of the committee in particular had decided he was going to get to the bottom of this and shared that his plan of discovering the information would be to just ask God to show him the sins that this pastor may have been trying to cover up.  So the man prayed. Several days later, he reported to the committee that God had answered his request. With eager listening ears, the others awaited his response. The man shared these words, “God said He didn’t remember”. 
 
May we also let go of our shortcomings and our past sinful actions and attitudes. Forgetting what is behind and pressing on!
 
“We don't evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don't look at Him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with Himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what He is doing. We're Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them. We're speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you. How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.”
(2 Corinthians 5:16-21, The Message)