Each year, as New Year’s Day arrives, believers wrestle quietly with one of the Apostle Paul’s most puzzling assertions: “One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal” (Phil 3:13-14).
How—exactly—is it possible to “forget what lies behind”?
The year just lived was full of slights and insults: they fester unforgettably each time that face or name appears.
The year just past brought wounds—both planned and unintentional. Can willing it remove the evidence of scars?
The year gone by saw failures—ours and others—whose effects cannot be trimmed by noting January 1. Will the famed power of positive thinking erase the pain of choices we or others made?
We only can forget what we’ve forgiven—done by us, or done by others. And we only can forgive when we’re forgiven—by a power outside ourselves who cannot lie. God “never changes or casts a shifting shadow” (James 1:17).
“God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them” (2 Cor 5:19).
What God forgets, we safely can forget. When God forgives, we find His grace to add our own, releasing others and ourselves from all of last year’s failures.
Grace doesn’t simply turn the page. It sees, acknowledges, forgives—and gradually forgets. The year ahead will help us practice our forgetting.
So stay in grace. -Bill Knott
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THE NIGHT WILL BE LIGHT (December 15, 2023)
NEVER WAS A WAR (December 08, 2023)
WATCHING OVER US (December 01, 2023)
FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH (November 24, 2023)
ALL ARE GIFTED (November 17, 2023)
BEYOND BIOLOGY (November 10,2023)
PEACE AMID THE CHAOS (November 03, 2023)
GRACE HAS A FACE (October 27, 2023)
UNEXPECTED (October 20, 2023)
SAYING WHAT’S TRUE (October 13, 2023)
BETTER THAN PLATINUM (October 06, 2023)
THE ONLY HERO STORY (September 29, 2023)
ACCORDING TO OUR NEED (September 22, 2023)
GIFTED AND GRACED (September 15, 2023)
BETTER THAN WE DREAMED (September 08, 2023)
FREELY RECEIVED AND GLADLY GIVEN (September 01. 2023)
NEW AND BETTER STORIES (August 25, 2023)
WHEN THERE’S NO FIX (August 18, 2023)
NOTHING TO OFFER (August 11, 2023)
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