God changes the past, the present, and the future.
In His mind, the only true history is not a record of facts; it is the reality that came into existence by faith.
When you read all the stories of faith in Hebrews 11, and when you read the records of men in the Scriptures and see their faith—such as the faith of Abraham, which God accounted to him for righteousness (Galatians 3:6; Genesis 15:6)—you realize that when God wrote their history, it was quite a bit different from some of the facts that seemed to exist. When God justifies, He blots out the memory and the reality of the transgression, and we become the righteousness of God by faith (II Corinthians 5:21). We may be able to remember our sin and where we failed God, but He buries it in the sea of His forgetfulness (Micah 7:19). He removes our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west, and remembers them no more forever (Psalm 103:12; Jeremiah 31:34). This is what God is able to do, and this is also what He will enable us to do.
He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot. Yes, Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Micah 7:19. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. Psalm 103:12.
“And they shall not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” Jeremiah 31:34.
What do you look upon in the past? Of what do you say, “This is the fact”? Let me point out to you that you may have seen it through the eyes of unbelief; there may have been a distortion of the circumstances so that you didn’t really know what the truth was. But in your own mind, there is a conditioning of a memory that maintains, “This is what happened.” This can make men bitter. I have talked with many who have been bitter over what has happened in their life. Upon investigating the situation, however, I realized that it did not happen at all the way that they said. Nevertheless, to them it is the fact, the correct history. Their interpretation of it seems as unchangeable as the law of the Medes and Persians (Daniel 6:8); but it has to change.
Faith says, “O God, I stumbled before Thee, but You have forgiven me. I’ll not look back upon those days and remember them to bring them into my future and cloud it with what You have blotted out forever. I, too, will forget what You have forgotten. I will remember the Word You have spoken to my heart. If You can change my past, You can change my present; and You can change my future. My times are in Thy hand, O Lord (Psalm 31:15). I shall not be oriented to failure because I have failed. I will not be oriented to a limitation because it seems to be the present circumstance in my life. I will believe Your Word. Your Word shall not only alter the circumstance in Your heart, but shall also alter it in mine. If my brother has sinned against me, and he has asked me to forgive him, I shall not only forgive him seventy times seven, but I shall refuse to remember his offense against me (Matthew 18:21–22). To me, he shall be as one who has never sinned against me.”
If God could take Saul of Tarsus and forgive him when he was an enemy of God, then God can also take any one of us and make him a beloved disciple of the Lord.
It is not what you have done, or what another has done to you, that should be a valid conditioning of your mind forever. If God is faithful to forgive, you must have faith to believe for that faithfulness to be manifested in your own heart, too. You too can forgive.
Unbelief is always evidenced by bitterness. Faith is always evidenced by that divine quality of forgetfulness that buries forever the transgression of another.
Let us pray, “O Lord, I will not be limited in my thinking or in my spirit by what has been. I shall be prepared in my heart and in my spirit to walk with Thee in a new genesis, a new creation, a life that You have made over. Lord, in Your heart, when the annals of the Kingdom are written, they will not be written about men who failed; they will be a testimony of Thy faithfulness.”
“I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins.” Isaiah 43:25.
Bitterness is often the memory of distorted facts and our subjective reaction to those facts that happened in the past.
But God sees faith, and He accounts it for righteousness; and He blots out even the memory in His own heart of our transgressions against Himself (Galatians 3:6–9). Don’t you really believe that we, too, should pray to forgive and forget every transgression our brother or sister may have made against us and account their faith as righteousness? This is the big test. We can believe it for ourselves: “Lord, You have forgiven me, and You have blotted out my transgression to remember it no more.” Don’t you think that we can do the same for our brother or our sister?
A grudge, a bitterness, or an unforgiving spirit closes off the blessing of the Lord upon our own life. For if we do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will our Heavenly Father forgive us our trespasses (Matthew 6:15). This is the day in which God is saying, “You forgive and forget, or you will not be forgiven, and your sins will not be forgotten.”
The locking in of ourselves to the past is our own doing. We liberate ourselves when we come to Him and pray for His grace—grace not only to forgive our own sins, but grace to forget and account as blotted out forever the sins of our brother or sister who may have transgressed against us. This becomes an essential thing, for bitterness and unforgiveness close the doors of grace to our own heart. When we open our heart to forgive our brother, we find that our hearts are open to receive the Heavenly Father’s forgiveness for us also. God bless this Word to your heart.
God records the reality that came into existence through faith.
God forgets what He has forgiven.
What you have not forgiven will remain an active destructive force in your heart.
It takes faith to forgive; it takes grace to forget.
The unbelieving heart forgets “all His benefits” (Psalm 103:2), but remembers well the wrongs done to it.
Bitterness is a poison of the soul.
When we forgive, we open the windows of heaven upon ourselves.