Forget About It!

 "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!" Isaiah 43: 18-19

    It's okay to be forgetful sometimes.

    Take the Samaritan woman at the well for example. Her encounter with Jesus brought her to a beautiful new place where forgiveness replaced judgment as the sunshine of grace shone on her weary soul. She had been freed to forget about her storied past.

    The leper also met Jesus. For the first time in what seemed like forever, he was touched by Another, by the very hand of God! As the lesions left him, so did the libelous label of Leper. He'd been given a new lease on life.

    Demons so possessed a man that, for a long time, he did not dwell in a house or even wear any clothes. Ravaged and alone, he lived in the tombs by the lake, until the day the Savior stepped ashore and liberated him from his torment, casting the demons out into a herd of pigs. Dressed and in his right mind, the Messiah instructed him to return home and tell everyone what God had done for him.

    All three, formerly imprisoned, were eager to forget the past and embrace endless possibilities! Do you suppose they'd want to look back? Would the woman return to her life of sin, the leper to the colony or the demoniac to the tombs? No, driven by the happiness of the Holy Spirit, they exercised their salvation by moving forward, following in the footsteps of Jesus. 

    The Apostle Paul discovered that for himself after his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus. The man who once persecuted Christians was now on the journey of a lifetime, preaching and teaching the Good News. As he said in his letter to the Philippians:

    "But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3: 13-14