060903 Steeple Article: "Forgiveness that Keeps on Forgetting"

There seems to be a lot of pressure in our world to remember. Officially, memory is about the ability to recall events or facts. Impaired memory is usually not rewarded. If we fail to remember to do something in the future or fail to remember what happened in the past, then we may tend to believe that our quality of life is somehow reduced. Even if we do the same things, only less of it, just a bit slower, or not as accurately, we require greater emotion intelligence and patience so as to better deal with lapses of memory.
It could be that when we are younger we have to work harder at remembering to forget what might weigh us down in life. When Joseph was a young man, he was flung into a pit, sold by his brothers, wrongly accused by a lascivious woman, and then put in prison awaiting possible death. But he refused to stay in the past and remember what he suffered. He became Egypt’s most powerful person and named his first child Manasseh, which means, “God made me forget” (Genesis 41:51). Paul invites each one of us to practice the same kind of blessing by, "Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before.” In this way God encourages you and me to “press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).
God empowers us to forget and forgive by dulling the vividness of hurtful memories like overwhelming loneliness, stunning grief, bewildering shock, and distracting confusion. This great blessing from the passage of time keeps us from nursing injuries, remembering old insults, and planning revenge. Since God promises to forgive our iniquity, and remember our sin no more (Jeremiah 31:34), we can trust God to teach how to be like Joseph and forget what we need to forget and to leave behind the hurts, insults, and injuries of the past.
Even if we occasionally forget to pick up an item from the grocery store, a love one’s birthday, or the car keys, we can take heart. For this is a reminder of God’s loving grace and forgiveness that forgets our sins. God completely forgives us, when we confess our sins and ask for forgiveness. Now we must do the same by forgiving others and ourselves. We should fully accept God's promise of forgiveness as part of Christ’s complete salvation and reconciliation.
The past does not “hold” anything. And eventually we can understand that we can never really “save time.” God does not remember the past against us. Christ’s sacrifice has once and for all time washed us clean, so that we are changed eternally. Please pray this prayer with me:
Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for Your divine authority and power to forget the pain of old hurts and to forgive those who hurt me. Thank You for the ability to forget the hurts of the past, so that I am free to live fully in the present. Thank You for releasing me from bitterness about the past. Thank You for Your love and forgiveness that floods my soul. Thank You for reminding me that You have forgiven me. Thank You for giving me permission to let go of my troubled past. In the precious name of Jesus Christ, Amen.