{"id":35495,"date":"2023-06-28T03:30:17","date_gmt":"2023-06-28T10:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/?p=35495"},"modified":"2023-06-19T11:56:05","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T18:56:05","slug":"june-28-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/2023\/06\/28\/june-28-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"June 28, 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div><\/div><\/div>

Forget About It<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u00a0<\/em>\u201cFor God has made me forget all my toil and all my father\u2019s house.\u201d<\/em> Genesis 41:51<\/p>\n

Does God have a great big pink eraser that He uses to erase our memories?<\/p>\n

Genesis 41:51, above, refers to Joseph\u2019s great joy at the birth of his first son, Manasseh, whose name means, \u201cmaking forgetful.\u201d Joseph had experienced tremendous rejection by his siblings, even being sold by them as a slave to some travelers, who then sold him again, landing him in the home of the mighty ruler of a foreign country. Who wouldn\u2019t want to forget the pain of abandonment and rejection, misunderstanding and cruelty, fear and uncertainty?<\/p>\n

Joseph \u201cforgot\u201d his past when God gave him a gift over which he rejoiced. Today, psychologists might say that Joseph \u201cburied his memories.\u201d But for Joseph, the gift of God triumphed over the evil that had been done to him. The old life was not worthy to be remembered, in light of the new life.<\/p>\n

We see this forgetfulness again in the New Testament. In Philippians 3:12-13, Paul has been \u201claid hold of\u201d by Christ, and thus he now wants to \u201clay hold of\u201d his future; he does this by \u201cforgetting those things which are behind\u201d so that he can \u201creach forward to those things which are ahead\u201d.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s face it: some things only serve to drag us down, to hold us in place like a trap does to a wild animal. Our past can do this to us. Jesus has a dire warning about looking back: \u201cNo one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God\u201d<\/em> (Luke 9:62). The bottom line: Don\u2019t let your remembrance of your past dictate your response to the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.<\/p>\n

If you look in a Bible concordance for the word \u201cforget,\u201d you will see far more Scriptures exhorting us \u201cnot to forget\u201d than to \u201cforget.\u201d We can conclude, after looking at these exhortations, that we are to FORGET what we have done<\/em> and what has happened to us<\/em>, and REMEMBER what our Lord has done for us and in us<\/em>. For instance, in James 1:24, we are specifically told NOT to forget what God has shown us about ourselves.<\/p>\n

I know that it is hard to forget the wrongs done to us. But God, by His mercy, can CAUSE forgetfulness, as with Joseph; and He can, by His grace, ENABLE US TO CHOOSE forgetfulness, as with Paul.<\/p>\n

Father, help us forget any evil that has been done to us, and give us the ability to choose not to be influenced by it, but to press on to what You have laid out ahead of us. In Jesus\u2019 Name, Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92wjD-9ev","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35496,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35495\/revisions\/35496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}