Forget About It

Sometimes it is good to forget.  Just let it go and don’t remember it any more.  If you have lived as many years as I have, it is likely that you have forgotten a bunch of stuff - like I have.  Forgetting is not always a bad thing, and it is not always an easy thing.  Sometimes forgetting can be very difficult.  If you are like me, those things that you most want to forget are the hardest to forget.  I am sure there is some psychological explanation here but I just don’t care.  

When dealing with something that is not easily forgotten, if a person desires to no longer think on that thing, they have to stop considering it.  This process is phrased - putting it out of mind.  Sometimes we have to throw things out of our craniums like a drunk is thrown through the saloon doors.  Those things are better put outside where they can do no harm.  

In the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, God instructs the Israelites to “Remember not the former things…”  The former things included times of disobedience and punishment for the people and nation of Israel.  They included some pretty embarrassing times and times of great pain and captivity.  The Lord wanted His people to forget those things.  In fact, it appears that God knows psychology, because He knew that some of the Jews would not effortlessly forget the former things.  In the same verse, He goes on to say “nor consider the things of old.”  So, forget it and if that is not possible, keep your mind from even thinking about it.

Why would the Lord suggest this?  Why forget the past, the “former things”?  Well, it appears that God had plans.  “Behold”. Take notice. Check this out.  God, the Creator of the universe, was “doing a new thing…”  It is certainly no small matter when an eternal God describes His actions as “a new thing.”  But along with the declaration of the new thing was the command to forget the old.  You have to get rid of the baggage at times.  Purge the closet.  Renovate the kitchen!  

When God is doing a new thing but you are carrying the same old garbage around with you, the blessing is missed.  The new thing is lost.  If the Jews had been allowed to enter the new thing the Lord had planned while fixating on the past failures, they may have never experienced their freedom from captivity.  They may have never crossed the desert wasteland to rebuild their lives in Jerusalem.  They may have never accomplished the thing that God had laid out for them - The New Thing.  

If God is doing a new thing in your life, forget the past.  Do not even consider the things of old - most especially the old you.  When God is doing a new thing, join Him!

Isaiah 43:19