How Could I Not Remember?

Last month, Tami and I went to spend a few days with family in Arizona. One afternoon, while we were outside in the pool enjoying the 108-degree day, I was eating a snack and felt a part of a tooth chip off. I was surprised and started getting depressed thinking that this must be what happens as a person gets older. You’re having a good time laughing and eating a snack one minute, then a part of your tooth chips off the next. I told Tami what had happened and started worrying about eating. The good news is that I didn’t stop eating but enjoyed every meal and snack I ate while gone, but I knew that I needed to get to the dentist as soon as we returned home to get the problem fixed.

Last week I went to the dentist to go through the normal cleaning and find out about my chipped tooth. As the dental hygienist was putting on my bib, one of the more humiliating things about going to the dentist, I explained to her about my tooth that had a chip in it. She began looking at my records and noticed that I’d had a problem back in 2008 with the same thing happening. I was shocked because I didn’t remember that event, but she assured me it was right there in my records. In fact, she said it was tooth number 24, and when she asked me to point to the tooth, sure enough—it was the same tooth. She told me that it had been chipped and they filled it so this was nothing new. I sat in that chair during the rest of my appointment trying to remember the day I had a chip on that tooth repaired at the dentist office, and here I sit a week later with no recollection of that event ever happening in my life.

Thinking about that incident it felt like the Holy Spirit was trying to teach me a lesson about God’s forgiveness. So often we can get caught in the trap of letting past failures or sins hinder us from moving on with God. We become fearful that God will bring up the sin again as a reminder that He has something on us if we don’t walk the line. Yet, the Bible promises us that when God forgives us of our sins and failures, they are totally gone from His memory. I don’t know about you, but that’s hard for me to imagine because I remember a lot of my sins and failures. Then the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart and assured me that just as I couldn’t remember ever chipping and having that tooth filled five years ago, God doesn’t remember any past sins or failures even from yesterday if I live under the forgiving power of Jesus Christ. We are reassured of this by the promise that, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9). 

Don’t allow your past to dictate what God wants to do with your life in the future. Just as I couldn’t remember a chipped tooth, we all need to remember that when God forgives, He forgets.