Remember To Forget

And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” Mark 11:25

No matter how much two people love each other, conflicts are sure to arise that call for extending grace and showing forgiveness. Do you know that couples who are happy and stay married have the same number of disagreements and conflicts as couples who are unhappy and get divorced? Statistically, that is true! It’s not the absence of conflict that preserves marriage, but the ability to manage conflict when it happens. So how do you ‘manage’ conflict? By practicing the kind of self-control that keeps conflicts from mushrooming into hurtful and divisive stand-offs. It also means knowing what to do with hurt feelings like anger, disappointment, and dashed expectations. In other words, it means knowing how to forgive it and forget it. But emotional hurt and tension are almost impossible to forget; the harder we try, the more we remember. So, what’s the answer? Remember to forget! Try to act like God, who chooses not to hold against us what He knows about us. He says in His Word: ‘I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins’ (Isaiah 43:25). That means if you are holding something against someone, there’s only one solution: forgive it and forget it. You may never forget how you’ve been hurt, but you can choose to forgive it and move on. No, it’s not easy, but you can do it. How? By remembering the things, known or unknown to others, that God has forgiven you for and extending that same grace to your others.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, help me to forgive others and forget as You do with my wrongs. In Jesus’ Name, Amen