“To remember only the pain, or only the joy, would be incomplete”

This month’s blog posts on Thursdays resulted from welcome comments Samantha White left after my blog post, Don’t Forget Your Memories!

If you’ve been hanging around SM 101 for a while, you know we emphasize the importance of remembering, based on several Bible verses, and Samantha’s probing ponderings brought real-life clarity to the topic.

With grace and wisdom, Samantha wrote, “Remembering can be a great gift and also a great curse. Memories can haunt us and pull us away from the present.…”

And so, her insight brings us to the end of this month’s examination of forgiveness and whether forgiving also means forgetting.

(If you missed earlier posts, here are links: Does forgiveness leave room for forgetting AND remembering?  We’ve all been there.  Is God’s grace is out of reach?) If we’re ready for “…a radical reconstruction of the heart,” (Max Lucado), God is ready and eager to forgive. God’s forgiveness is complete. Perfect. We also need to forgive ourselves.)  

So the question today is:

After God forgives us, after God takes our sins from us—as far as the east is from the west!—should we forget our wrongdoings? Or should we remember them?

Here’s what I think:

If remembering keeps us stuck in pain and regret,

if remembering prevents us from moving on,

if remembering keeps us mired in self-loathing,

if remembering our forgiven sins defines us and declares us ruined for the rest of our lives,

then remembering is not God’s best for us.

On the other hand,

if remembering focuses us on God’s unfailing love and all-sufficient grace,

if remembering makes us fall on our knees before Him in awe and thanksgiving,

if remembering speaks of  “a joyful release from the things that have bound us far too long” (Chuck Swindoll, Grace Awakening),

if remembering helps us hope,

if remembering blows us away,

if remembering shows how far God has brought us,

if remembering leads us to delight in God and love Him more,

then let’s remember!

God invites us to a sacred remembering,

a sacred remembering that releases us from wallowing in old history,

a sacred remembering that invites us to be our true selves: “Your True Self is who you are in God and who God is in you” (Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for our True Self),

a sacred remembering that enables us to live in the present, and for the future,

a sacred remembering that leads us to say, like David,

“Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things he does for me. He forgives all my sins” (Psalm 103:1-2, NLT).

and, “You have changed my sadness into a joyful dance; you have taken away all my sorrow and surrounded me with joy. So I will not be silent; I will sing praise to you. Lord, you are my God; I will give you thanks forever” (Psalm 30:11-12, GNT).

 “Never be afraid when God brings back the past.

Let memory have its way.

God will turn the ‘might have been’

into a wonderful beginning for the future.”

(Oswald Chambers)

Forget the things that happened in the past.

Do not keep thinking about them.

I am about to do something new.

Don’t you see it coming?

I am going to make a way for you

to go through the desert.

I will make streams of water

in the dry and empty land.

  (Isaiah 43:18,19, NIRV)

God invites us to a sacred remembering in which we view our forgiven sins not as through rose-colored glasses, but as through grace-fogged glasses, when we view forgiven sins as distant clouds, as morning mists.

Samantha wrote these rich, insightful words that will bless your life and help you write your memoir:

“Memories can … make us deeply grateful for all the good we’ve received. One of the gifts for me in writing my memoir is that it helped me put my most painful memories to rest. By publishing them, I have given them wings on which to fly and stay alive, without my having to personally relive them daily.… The Bible is about times of pestilence and suffering AND triumph and survival. I suppose we need to remember it all … that life was difficult, and that we overcame and grew.… To remember only the pain, or only the joy, would be incomplete. We need to remember it all, as a package, because life is all of it. Pain and loss, healing and joy. We LEARN by remembering!!! I think the message of the Bible, ‘Remember,’ also means ‘Don’t let the suffering, nor what was gained and learned from it, be wasted. Learn. Remember what we’ve learned.’”

Many thanks, Samantha! 

You have blessed us all!

I never dreamed I'd be capable of doing that

We’ve all been there. We’ve chosen to do something selfish, mean, immoral—or maybe even illegal.

We’ve made willful decisions that hurt people and bring shame upon us. Deliberate actions that cause life-long consequences—for ourselves and others.

Sometimes it takes a long, long time to admit our transgression.

And when we do, the enormity of our offence hits right between the eyes.

The depth of our wrongdoing feels like a kick in the stomach and we take a new look at ourselves and say, “I never dreamed I could be capable of doing that.”

“Who am I? And what that kind of person am I, really?”

Yes, we’ve all been there.

Eventually we realize we couldn’t hide any of it from God. He knows every detail.

 

Like David, we cry out, 

Oh, God, don’t cast me away! 

Don’t reject me! 

(Psalm 51:11)

And we know deep down inside that we can do nothing—nothing—to undo what we’ve done. We can’t make our actions disappear. We are powerless to do anything to clean ourselves up.

All we can do is fall on our faces, confess our hard-hearted, selfish disobedience, and ask God’s forgiveness.

If our repentance is sincere, God is ready to forgive.

If we’re ready for “…a radical reconstruction of the heart,” (Max Lucado), God is ready to forgive.

Repentance:

“… a radical

and deliberate

turning or returning to God

that results in

moral

and ethical

change

and action.”

(from NIV Study Bible footnote for Matthew 4:17; 

emphasis mine)

Yes, God is eager to forgive.

Remember that symphony from last Thursday? Here it is again:

“God not only puts our sins out of sight

(Isaiah 38:17);

he also puts them out of reach

(Micah 7:19, Psalm 103:12),

out of mind

(Jeremiah 31:34)

and out of existence

(Isaiah 43:25; Isaiah 44:22; Psalm 51:1, 9; Acts 3:19).”

(NIV Study Bible’s comment for Isaiah 38:17; emphasis mine)

God’s forgiveness is complete.

His forgiveness is perfect.

We are undeserving, but “… Through forgiveness, [God] releases us from a debt we could never pay and assures us of His continuing love for us.” (Martin De Haan)

Our only response must be to accept His mindboggling forgiveness, grace, and mercy.

Fully accepting and grasping God’s forgiveness can take a long time, but after we do, can we forgive ourselves?

And after God forgives us, after God takes our sins from us—as far as the east is from the west!—should we forget our wrongdoings? Or should we remember our willful disobedience? Or should we do a little bit of both?

We’ll come back to this next week but, for now, think about these questions. Pray about these questions.

Listen to something important:

Your readers—

your kids, grandkids, great-grandkids,

generations yet unborn—

will struggle with their own failures

and weaknesses

and temptations

and sins.

God can use your life’s stories

to help them turn to Him

for forgiveness and restoration.

Your stories are important.

Spelling out every last detail

might not be appropriate

(more on that next week)

but with God’s help,

you can write stories to bless

entire families and generations.

What stories do you need to write?

(Revised from an earlier post)

Forgiveness: forgetting and remembering?

“‘I was wrong. I’m sorry. Now let’s get on with business. It’s your job to forgive me. It’s time for us both to put this behind us.’ With a few well-chosen words, the tables are turned. Like a wrestler doing an escape and reverse, an offender gains the upper hand. His victims are now expected to forgive and forget.

“He might even remind them that according to Jesus, if we don’t forgive others, our Father in heaven won’t forgive us (Matthew 6:14-15).

“Now that I’ve admitted my wrong, now that God has forgiven me, and now that the Bible requires you to forgive me, why can’t we act like this never happened?”

Thus writes Martin De Haan in his article, Forgiveness (from Times of Discovery, Volume 60, Number 1; emphasis mine).

He continues, “We’ve been told that when God forgives, He forgets, and that if we really forgive, we’ll forget too.”

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of such words, you know the ripping, searing feeling in your heart because something about this doesn’t seem quite right!

So, let’s look at what the Bible says about God’s forgiveness:

“God not only puts our sins out of sight,

(Isaiah 38:17);

he also puts them out of reach,

(Micah 7:19, Psalm 103:12),

out of mind,

(Jeremiah 31:34)

and out of existence.

(Isaiah 43:25; Isaiah 44:22; Psalm 51:1, 9; Acts 3:19).”

(NIV Study Bible’s comment for Isaiah 38:17; emphasis mine)

So, God forgets.

God forgets?

“God doesn’t forget anything,” states De Haan. “From cover to cover, the Bible shows that God remembers the sins of His people.

“Both Old and New Testaments are full of stories which preserve forever the memory of His people’s forgiven wrongs.”

Whoa. I don’t know about you, but sometimes the Bible and God jerk my emotions around.

So God forgets but He also remembers?

De Haan proposes that forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. He observes that while we can easily forget some wrongs against us, others are “always near the edge of our awareness.”

“When God says He will not remember our sins,” De Haan says, “He means He won’t remember them against us.”

Read that again: “When God says He will not remember our sins, He means He won’t remember them against us.”

Pastor Sid said it this way one Sunday morning: To forgive is to let go of holding someone guilty.

In the Hebrew, Jeremiah 31:34 means God will not mention, recount, bring to remembrance, or think about those of our sins He has forgiven.

Max Lucado has an earthier way of explaining it: When God says He will remember our sins no more, it means He will not rub our noses in them.

So what should we do when someone says to us, “The Bible requires you to forgive me, why can’t we act like this never happened?”

“Forgiveness may not involve complete restoration,” suggests De Haan.

“… Forgiveness doesn’t require a return to business as usual. There may be results that are irreversible.…”

De Haan is talking about natural, reasonable, and logical consequences.

“Forgiveness may allow for consequences. A forgiver may still wisely and lovingly ask for reasonable restitution, legal due process, a plan to avoid recurrences, and time to heal. Wise follow-through is often necessary if we are going to forgive and love well.”

Forgiveness takes lots of time and it requires the offender’s genuine repentance.

“Repentance is more than

a change of mind

or feeling sorry for one’s sins.

It is a radical

and deliberate

turning or returning to God

that results in

moral

and ethical

change

and action.”

(from NIV Study Bible footnote for Matthew 4:17; emphasis mine)

It is wise to develop a plan for healing.

(It is also wise to develop a plan for rebuilding trust. Forgiving is not the same as trusting again, but that’s a topic for another day.)

So what do you think? 

Does forgiveness leave room for forgetting AND remembering?

Revised from a post in November 2012

“To remember only the pain, or only the joy, would be incomplete”

This month’s blog posts resulted from welcome comments Samantha White left after my blog post, Don’t Forget Your Memories!

If you’ve been hanging around SM 101 for a while, you know we emphasize the importance of remembering, based on several Bible verses, and Samantha’s probing ponderings brought real-life clarity to the topic.

With grace and wisdom, Samantha wrote, “Remembering can be a great gift and also a great curse. Memories can haunt us and pull us away from the present.…”

And so, her insight brings us to the end of this month’s examination of forgiveness and whether forgiving also means forgetting.

(If you missed earlier posts, here are links: Does forgiveness leave room for forgetting AND remembering? If we’re ready for “…a radical reconstruction of the heart,” (Max Lucado), God is ready and eager to forgive. God’s forgiveness is complete. Perfect. We also need to forgive ourselves.)

So the question today is:

After God forgives us, after God takes our sins from us—as far as the east is from the west!—should we forget our wrongdoings? Or should we remember them?

Here’s what I think:

If remembering keeps us stuck in pain and regret,

if remembering prevents us from moving on,

if remembering keeps us mired in self-loathing,

if remembering our forgiven sins defines us and declares us ruined for the rest of our lives,

then remembering is not God’s best for us.

On the other hand,

if remembering focuses us on God’s unfailing love and all-sufficient grace,

if remembering makes us fall on our knees before Him in awe and thanksgiving,

if remembering speaks of  “a joyful release from the things that have bound us far too long” (Chuck Swindoll, Grace Awakening),

if remembering helps us hope,

if remembering  blows us away,

if remembering shows how far God has brought us,

if remembering leads us to delight in God and love Him more,

then let’s remember!

God invites us to a sacred remembering,

a sacred remembering that releases us from wallowing in old history,

a sacred remembering that invites us to be our true selves: “Your True Self is who you are in God and who God is in you” (Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for our True Self),

a sacred remembering that enables us to live in the present, and for the future,

a sacred remembering that leads us to say, like David,

“Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things he does for me. He forgives all my sins” (Psalm 103:1-2, NLT).

and, “You have changed my sadness into a joyful dance; you have taken away all my sorrow and surrounded me with joy. So I will not be silent; I will sing praise to you. Lord, you are my God; I will give you thanks forever” (Psalm 30:11-12, GNT).

 “Never be afraid when God brings back the past.

Let memory have its way.

God will turn the ‘might have been’

into a wonderful beginning for the future.”

(Oswald Chambers)

Forget the things that happened in the past.

Do not keep thinking about them.

I am about to do something new.

Don’t you see it coming?

I am going to make a way for you

to go through the desert.

I will make streams of water

in the dry and empty land.

  (Isaiah 43:18,19, NIRV)

God invites us to a sacred remembering in which we view our forgiven sins not as through rose-colored glasses, but as through grace-fogged glasses, when we view forgiven sins as distant clouds, as morning mists.

Samantha wrote insightful words that will bless your life and help you write your memoir:

“Memories can … make us deeply grateful for all the good we’ve received. One of the gifts for me in writing my memoir is that it helped me put my most painful memories to rest. By publishing them, I have given them wings on which to fly and stay alive, without my having to personally relive them daily.… The Bible is about times of pestilence and suffering AND triumph and survival. I suppose we need to remember it all … that life was difficult, and that we overcame and grew.… To remember only the pain, or only the joy, would be incomplete. We need to remember it all, as a package, because life is all of it. Pain and loss, healing and joy. We LEARN by remembering!!! I think the message of the Bible, ‘Remember,’ also means ‘Don’t let the suffering, nor what was gained and learned from it, be wasted. Learn. Remember what we’ve learned.’”

Many thanks, Samantha! You have blessed us all!

Your memoir: sharing about sin and God’s forgiveness

We’ve all been there. We’ve chosen to do something selfish, something mean, immoral, or maybe even illegal.

We’ve made willful decisions that hurt people and bring shame upon us. Deliberate actions that cause life-long consequences for ourselves and others.

Sometimes it takes a long, long time to admit our wrongdoing.

And when we do, the enormity of our offence hits right between the eyes.

The depth of our corruption feels like a kick in the stomach and we take a new look at ourselves and say, “I never dreamed I could one day be capable of doing that.”

“Who am I? And what that kind of person am I, really?”

Yes, we’ve all been there.

Eventually we realize we couldn’t hide any of it from God. He knows every detail.

 

Like David, we cry out, Oh, God, don’t cast me away—don’t shove me out of Your presence! Don’t chase me away! (Psalm 51:11)

And we know deep down inside that we can do nothing—nothing—to undo what we’ve done. We can’t make our actions disappear. We are powerless to do anything to clean ourselves up.

All we can do is fall on our faces, confess our hard-hearted, selfish disobedience, and ask God’s forgiveness.

If our repentance is sincere, God is ready to forgive.

If we’re ready for “…a radical reconstruction of the heart,” (Max Lucado), God is ready to forgive.

Repentance:

“… a radical

and deliberate

turning or returning to God

that results in

moral

and ethical

change

and action.”

(from NIV Study Bible footnote for Matthew 4:17; emphasis mine)

Yes, God is eager to forgive.

Remember that symphony from last week? Here it is again:

“God not only puts our sins out of sight

[Isaiah 38:17];

he also puts them out of reach

(Micah7:19, Psalm 103:12),

out of mind

(Jeremiah 31:34)

and out of existence

(Isaiah 43:25; Isaiah 44:22; Psalm 51:1, 9; Acts 3:19).”

(NIV Study Bible’s comment for Isaiah 38:17; emphasis mine)

God’s forgiveness is complete.

His forgiveness is perfect.

We are undeserving, but “… Through forgiveness, [God] releases us from a debt we could never pay and assures us of His continuing love for us.” (Martin De Haan)

Our only response must be to accept His mindboggling forgiveness, grace, and mercy.

Fully accepting and grasping God’s forgiveness can take a long time, but after we do, can we forgive ourselves?

And after God forgives us, after God takes our sins from us—as far as the east is from the west!—should we forget our wrongdoings? Or should we remember our willful disobedience? Or should we do a little bit of both?

We’ll come back to this next week but, for now, think about these questions. Pray about these questions.

Listen to something important:

Your readers—

your kids, grandkids, great-grandkids,

generations yet unborn—

will struggle with their own failures

and weaknesses

and temptations

and sins.

God can use your life’s stories

to help them turn to Him

for forgiveness and restoration.

Your stories are important.

Spelling out every last detail

might not be appropriate

(more on that next week)

but with God’s help,

you can write stories to bless

entire families and generations.

What stories do you need to write?

Does forgiveness leave room for forgetting AND remembering?

“‘I was wrong. I’m sorry. Now let’s get on with business. It’s your job to forgive me. It’s time for us both to put this behind us.’ With a few well-chosen words, the tables are turned. Like a wrestler doing an escape and reverse, an offender gains the upper hand. His victims are now expected to forgive and forget.

“He might even remind them that according to Jesus, if we don’t forgive others, our Father in heaven won’t forgive us (Matthew 6:14-15).”

“Now that I’ve admitted my wrong, now that God has forgiven me, and now that the Bible requires you to forgive me, why can’t we act like this never happened?”

Thus writes Martin De Haan in his article, Forgiveness.* 

He continues, “We’ve been told that when God forgives, He forgets, and that if we really forgive, we’ll forget too.”

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of such words, you know the ripping, searing feeling in your heart because something about this doesn’t seem quite right!

So, let’s look at what the Bible says about God’s forgiveness:

“God not only puts our sins out of sight

[Isaiah 38:17];

he also puts them out of reach

(Micah7:19, Psalm 103:12),

out of mind

(Jeremiah 31:34)

and out of existence

(Isaiah 43:25; Isaiah 44:22; Psalm 51:1, 9; Acts 3:19).”

(NIV Study Bible’s comment for Isaiah 38:17; emphasis mine)

So, God forgets.

God forgets?

“God doesn’t forget anything,” states De Haan. “From cover to cover, the Bible shows that God remembers the sins of His people.

“Both Old and New Testaments are full of stories which preserve forever the memory of His people’s forgiven wrongs.”

Whoa. I don’t know about you, but sometimes the Bible and God jerk my emotions around.

So God forgets but He also remembers.

De Haan proposes that forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. He observes that while we can easily forget some wrongs against us, others are “always near the edge of our awareness.”

“When God says He will not remember our sins,” De Haan says, “He means He won’t remember them against us.”

Read that again: “When God says He will not remember our sins, He means He won’t remember them against us.”

Pastor Sid said it this way Sunday: to forgive is to let go of holding someone guilty.

In the Hebrew, Jeremiah 31:34 means God will not mention, recount, bring to remembrance, or think about those of our sins He has forgiven.

Max Lucado has an earthier way of explaining it: When God says He will remember our sins no more, it means He will not rub our noses in them.

So what should we do when someone says to us, “The Bible requires you to forgive me, so why can’t we act like this never happened?”

“Forgiveness may not involve complete restoration,” suggests De Haan.

“… Forgiveness doesn’t require a return to business as usual. There may be results that are irreversible.…”

De Haan is talking about natural, reasonable, and logical consequences.

“Forgiveness may allow for consequences. A forgiver may still wisely and lovingly ask for reasonable restitution, legal due process, a plan to avoid recurrences, and time to heal. Wise follow-through is often necessary if we are going to forgive and love well.”

Forgiveness takes lots of time and it requires the offender’s genuine repentance.

“Repentance is more than

a change of mind

or feeling sorry for one’s sins.

It is a radical

and deliberate

turning or returning to God

that results in

moral

and ethical

change

and action.”

(from NIV Study Bible footnote for Matthew 4:17; 

emphasis mine)

It is wise to develop a plan for healing.

(It is also wise to develop a plan for rebuilding trust. Forgiving is not the same as trusting again, but that’s a topic for another day.)

So what do you think? Does forgiveness leave room for forgetting AND remembering?

* “Forgiveness,” from Times of Discovery, Volume 60, Number 1