If you ever want to shut down a conversation with God, I know a way.

 – Bring up your past.

– Try to talk about your old sins, the ones you’ve already confessed and walked away from.

– Ignore the fact that they are forgiven and forgotten.

Sins. Seriously. Forgotten.

If we try to bring up dealt-with failings from our yesterdays as a source of conversation with Him, He’s only going to have one response:

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Because our awesome God has a character trait, an ability, that we can’t even comprehend.

He can forget the very things that once most offended Him.

We say we believe that He forgives us, that we’ve claimed and accepted that forgiveness, but we keep living in this place of shame, coming back to Him again and again over what’s already been thrown away. As if He operates like we do.

But…

He cannot forgive or forget any more than He already has.

He has complete and total amnesia in regard to our former failures.

If we forget something, we acknowledge it as a flaw, a mistake. How could forgetting be associated with an omniscient God?

His forgetting is intentional, purposeful.  It is necessary because He wants no trace of it tainting the relationship we have with Him. Because He has fully forgiven us, there is no purpose in Him remembering our sins.  And sin is the only thing He forgets.  Not because He can’t remember, but because He chooses not to.

Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

When we go to God as if our forgiven sins are as blood-red as when they were committed, or even tinged pink with the residual stain of regret, we are minimizing the same Amazing Grace that we love to sing about.

And God has no interest  in those types of conversations.

The only one who wants to talk with us about such things is the one who is feeding us the lie in the first place.

No thank you.

I want to see each day as the whitest white board, the ultimate clean slate, where God and I talk freely about all of the new things that come with recognizing forgiveness and its freedom for the future.

I long for God to write all over that white board in every imaginable color His ideas, His plans, His opportunities.  I want Him to underline words excitedly as we talk through verses and promises and truths that offer hope and peace and that abundant life He loves to share.

THOSE are the conversations that Jesus loves to have with us.

Let’s stop wasting time in one-way conversations about the past.  Let’s be intentional about “forgetting” the lie that has held us back and kept us down.  The lie that tells us God can’t forget.

If God has moved on, then so can we.

Today’s Dare:

 – Find that one thing that you keep bringing up to God that He’s already forgotten.  Write it down.  Then do something symbolic that reminds you of His great forgiveness – flush it down the toilet, burn it, rip it up and use it for the hamster cage. Just put it somewhere where it belongs – far away from your life, your mind, your heart.

 – Celebrate the purge with Jesus.  Sing with Him.  Talk to Him about something else.  Anything else.  And write THAT down.  Something that reminds you that He has something glorious in mind for your future, for your relationship with Him and others.

 – Smile.  You did something brave and intentional and good.  Your faith muscles are growing and it looks good on you. 🙂

Isaiah 43:25 – “I–yes, I alone–will blot out your sins for my own sake and will never think of them again.”

Hebrews 8:12 – “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.”

Micah 7:19 – You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.

Acts 3:19 – Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord…

Psalm 103:12 –  As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

Hebrews 10:17 – “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”