Can God Forget?

Hebrews 10:17 "And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more."

How can an all-knowing God forget our sins and iniquities?

As I lay in bed confessing my unforgiveness to certain people for certain things, the fact became obvious that in order to forgive, I must heal from the hurt of their actions, but in order to heal from the hurt, I must forgive. Somewhere in the cycle, I must choose to do both.

Sin greives God more than other people's actions and words greive us. Sin so greives God that He cannot stand to be in its presence. Yet He loves us and wants us to be in fellowship with Him. For this reason, He sent His Son to pay for our sins, to wash them white with His Blood.

It is when we confess our sins and fall under the umbrella of Christ's Blood that God will choose to not remember our sins and iniquities, to not hold them against us. The price for these sins has been paid through His Love, His Sacriface through His Son.

Eternal Salvation is available the first time we confess and ask God to be the center of our lives. Sanctification comes on a daily, sometimes minute-by-minute basis as we recognize our sins and confess them, turning from them to live our lives God's way rather than our own. It is then that God "remembers them no more."

Please go to Vonnie's blog at My Back Door to read more Monday Manna entries. Every Monday, either Vonnie or Joanne will host as we all share our thoughts on a verse posted on Thursday.

My Anger Journal

I was recently given the assignment to write down what makes me angry, every time I get angry. Even if it was a petty as “you coughed through the entire meeting”, I was to write it down. I obliged and did the assignment for a month. I do not see myself as an angry person, yet I found plenty of entries in my “anger journal.”

Obviously there was a reason behind this assignment. I do not yet know the exact reason I was assigned this task, but there are some things that I learned from doing it.

First, I learned that most of my anger is an expression of other feelings. I get angry when I feel rejected, ignored or excluded. I get angry when I am not heard on whatever issue is being discussed, or when I feel that someone has taken advantage of me.

Another thing that I learned was that most of the time when I get mad, the other person has no idea that I feel that way. There was no intention for harm or mistreatment on their part. This is not news to me, I would have told that to someone else who was somehow offended, but the list made it obvious in my own incidences with anger.

As I look over the list of what made me angry during that month, I see two distinct attitudes appear within myself. The healthy attitude is the one that says, “learn and move on.” In many cases, I look at an entry and think, “Yeah, I can see why I felt that way, but that happened in February.” I now know why that incident made me mad, but it no longer affects me.

The other attitude is much more damaging. Reading the list serves as a reminder in the areas that I have not yet forgiven the offense. “That’s right, so-and-so did that to me.” This is where the list becomes either very dangerous or most helpful. Do I choose to hold onto the offense of whatever caused me to get angry, or do I use that anger to turn to God to help me forgive the offender? My nature is to hold onto the offense, to feel that I am entitled to be angry. After all, that is what the whole paragraph about other feels suggests; I am entitled to be angry because I felt rejected or ignored ...or...or....or...

But the Bible tells me that I am to forgive. “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive you sins.” (Matt 6:14-15) That is the real value in doing an assignment like this; to point out to me where God is working in my life to get rid of unforgiveness so that I can become more like Him.