Dear Friends,
Do you ever think about things you've done in the past that you wish you could erase from memory? I do. Sometimes I think about significantly bad choices that hurt other people. And sometimes I think about dumb things that it is unlikely anyone else has ever cared about but that somehow still make me feel very foolish. In Psalm 25 verse 7, David prays about this problem, saying,
Do not remember the sins of my youth
and my rebellious ways;
according to your love remember me
for you, LORD, are good.
This prayer fascinates me because David asks God to think of him in accordance with who God is and not in accordance with who David is. David is rebellious and has made a lot of mistakes that have hurt a lot of people. He can't take any of his sins back after they have already been done. So if God looks at David and sees David's story, David looks pretty awful, and there is nothing David can do to change that. But David asks God to look at him through the lens of God's own goodness, seeing not what David has done but God's great love for David. This is an audacious prayer. And the most amazing thing about it is that God has actually agreed to this request, not just in his relationship with David, but in his relationship with all those who are now in Jesus.
When we become one with Jesus, the son of God, God no longer sees us according to our own stories of sin and failure but according to his great love as a Father for his children. It turns out to be true that love is blind, or at least amnesic. God's goodness actually changes how he sees us and remembers our stories. So we can come to him with confidence that we will be accepted. Not only that, but as we grow in relationship with him, becoming more and more like him in his love, we become amnesic too, beginning to see others according to the love of God that lives in us and not according to their sins and failings.
I encourage you today to pray this prayer of David's. Ask God to forget your sins and to show you how he feels about you. Ask that, going forward from here, you will become more like him in his love and his goodness. Ask to see yourself and others through his eyes.
Love in Christ,
Michelle
