Don’t look back (1)

Thu, 29 Dec 2022

‘Do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!’ Isaiah 43:18–19

Don’t look back. It is fruitless. You can’t change the past. Paul says, ‘I focus on this one thing: forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.’ (Philippians 3:13 NLT)

(1) We must forget our sins. Obviously, we must remember our sins in order to confess them. But having done so, we must let them go. The fact that God forgets is like calling Heaven and being told that there is no record of any offence. They have been erased as if they never existed. Satan would lure us to live in guilt and fear. He pulls us into the shadowboxes of memory so that our worst sins continually replay on the walls of our minds. We need to be very clear here, or we’ll miss the liberating point. It’s not as if forgiveness is real only if we experience some kind of holy amnesia. It’s not up to us. It’s up to God. And the Scriptures say that God forgets our sins (see Hebrews 8:12).

(2) We must forget our shame. Paul could have been a prime candidate for shame. He had presided over the harassment, imprisonment, torture, and murder of innocent human beings. But God’s grace is stronger than our shame. We can forget our slithering shame, for Jesus took it when Jesus died and rose again. He scorned it, beat it, broke it. We need not take it back.

The word for today is—‘

Do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing.’