Forgetting on Purpose

There is a way of remembering your failures that looks like humility but is actually a chain. You rehearse the old scenes at night, you let them define what you can expect of yourself, and you call this being realistic. Paul, who had plenty in his own past to rehearse, chose something else. He writes that he does one thing, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

That forgetting is not pretending the past did not happen. It is refusing to let the past set the direction of your body. A man walking forward cannot keep his eyes fixed behind him without stumbling, and Paul had learned to turn his face toward what God was still going to do with him.

For a man in the long fight against lust, this is permission you may not have given yourself. You are allowed to stop carrying yesterday into today. The setback last week does not have to be the theme of this morning. God is out ahead of you, calling, and the call is upward and toward him rather than backward and down.

Lord, I keep turning around to look at what I have done. Help me leave it with you and take the next step forward, toward the life you are still calling me into.