Day 27 - Kuwait
Today was very routine. No major surprises, just work, home, gym time and bed with food stops in between. But as I was driving to work this morning I was struck by a rather powerful thought.
Jeremiah 31:34b reads, "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." Here God is talking about the kind of forgiveness that he offers - a complete, all-encompassing forgiveness designed to give the highest assurance to all who call on him that he loves them thoroughly and perfectly.
I began to break it down. Can God really forget anything and still be all-knowing? A closer look at the verse shows that God isn't promising to forget; he promises to not remember any more. That's a huge difference. God knows, has always known and will always know everything. God knows all about our mistakes, our slip-ups, our disasters.
But in the interest of relationship God chooses to not hold it in our faces. He steps beyond the problems to get back to the business of loving us. Not that our mistakes are without consequences, but God is not interested in beating us down with past failures. Rather, God has extended his forgiveness to us. It is seen all throughout the Old Testament as he repeatedly spoke to and through his special people. It was completed through the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Today God continues to show an incredible love for us by refraining from holding our sin "in our faces", so to speak. And that's the thought that got to me. God knows all, yet he shows such restraint. He would be so right to bring the hammer down and hold us accountable for every time we have violated the relationship with him. But instead he shows perfect love coupled with perfect power, and looks beyond our mistakes to a point where we accept his forgiveness through the work of Jesus.
Because God wants a relationship with us.
I thought about how this translates in my life. If God has shown me this love, am I living in that reality? Moreover, am I extending that same concern for relationship to others? It didn't take too long for me to realize that I am having a hard time letting go of certain things. My prayer is that God's love would so envelop me that I would easily pass it on to others, letting things go and remembering their mistakes no more.
Jeremiah 31:34b reads, "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." Here God is talking about the kind of forgiveness that he offers - a complete, all-encompassing forgiveness designed to give the highest assurance to all who call on him that he loves them thoroughly and perfectly.
I began to break it down. Can God really forget anything and still be all-knowing? A closer look at the verse shows that God isn't promising to forget; he promises to not remember any more. That's a huge difference. God knows, has always known and will always know everything. God knows all about our mistakes, our slip-ups, our disasters.
But in the interest of relationship God chooses to not hold it in our faces. He steps beyond the problems to get back to the business of loving us. Not that our mistakes are without consequences, but God is not interested in beating us down with past failures. Rather, God has extended his forgiveness to us. It is seen all throughout the Old Testament as he repeatedly spoke to and through his special people. It was completed through the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Today God continues to show an incredible love for us by refraining from holding our sin "in our faces", so to speak. And that's the thought that got to me. God knows all, yet he shows such restraint. He would be so right to bring the hammer down and hold us accountable for every time we have violated the relationship with him. But instead he shows perfect love coupled with perfect power, and looks beyond our mistakes to a point where we accept his forgiveness through the work of Jesus.
Because God wants a relationship with us.
I thought about how this translates in my life. If God has shown me this love, am I living in that reality? Moreover, am I extending that same concern for relationship to others? It didn't take too long for me to realize that I am having a hard time letting go of certain things. My prayer is that God's love would so envelop me that I would easily pass it on to others, letting things go and remembering their mistakes no more.
