Our text for today is Matthew 6:14
“If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”
If you are human, you need to forgive someone at some point. The truth is that you may have needed to do this today. While sometimes this is not too hard to do, other times it seems like we are trying to forgive the unforgivable. Yes, there are things that seem unforgivable to us, but for the Christian, those too must be forgivable.
I still remember her like it was yesterday. She came to see me with tears in her eyes. She and her husband had an argument and in the middle of the argument, she mentioned an old hurt to him. He snapped back, “You told me you had forgiven me, but you lied! If you really forgave me, you would have forgotten that!” Feeling guilty, she wanted to know how one could forget old hurts. How do you do that?
For the times when you feel the weight of that question, let me give you two answers:
Answer #1. It Takes Time
There are no Bible passages that can erase memory. Old wounds heal, but healing is a slow process. Most of the time, old wounds do not really disappear. They just fade from view.
Answer #2. You Don’t Really Forget
Even God does not truly forget. I know He said, “I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34) God did not lose his omniscience. He made a decision not to call the old sin to mind. That is what He meant when he said, I will “remember their sins no more.”
When we forgive and forget that is what we do. We forgive and then choose not to call the old offense to our memory.
As several of us were helping a newly blended family move to a new house, I took a picture off the wall and there was a big hole behind it. At first, the lady was startled and then she confessed, “That is where my husband knocked me into the wall. I just put a picture over it.”
That is the way to forgive and forget. The old wound is there, but we just have to put a new picture over it. The new picture helps both parties.
~Lonnie Davis