Isaiah 43—44, 1 Thessalonians 2 • Key Verse: Isaiah 43:18
One of the most difficult things we can attempt to do is to forget. But sometimes forgetting is easy.
Usually that is when we are trying to remember someone’s name or what we were supposed to
pick up at the grocery store. Other things get so firmly embedded into our mind’s that nothing
could ever dislodge them. Our past can “haunt” us, actually affecting our present.
It is a challenge for us to forget the past, with its pains and failures. Yet God does not want us to
be controlled by such things. Instead, He wants us to live with a clear sense of forgiveness.
To His people, Israel, God said, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past” (43:18). To
give added emphasis to this instruction, God also said, “I, even I, am he who blots out your
transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more” (v. 25).
This is a tremendous picture of forgiveness. Our minds, which can’t remember names or that we
were supposed to pick up milk on the way home, hang on to hurts and wrongs for decades! Yet
God, who knows even the number of hairs on your head, says, “I will not remember your sins.”
Forgiveness is fantastic!
If only we would let forgiveness accomplish all that it can. It can free us from the pain of our past.
Forget it. Don’t dwell on it. These are not trendy phrases but biblical truth.
Is anything in your past affecting your present? Right now make sure it is forgiven and then ask God to help
you not bring it up again. Remember it no more.
Woodrow kroll & Tony beckett
www.backtothebible.in