What comes to your mind when you hear the word “forgetful?” When I hear that word I think of yogurt. This past year I got in the habit of taking a yogurt to school with me so that I could have a snack to eat after chapel. While this has become routine for me, at least once a week I walk into the school building only to remember that I had forgotten to grab my yogurt.

Can you relate to this experience? Maybe you are one of those people who forget to turn off all the lights before you leave the house. Maybe you are one of those people who go into another room to do something, only to forget why you got up from your chair in the first place. While the circumstances of our forgetfulness may be different, we do still all forget and that forgetfulness is almost always a bad thing.

I say “almost always” because there are times when forgetfulness is good. In Philippians 3:13-14 the inspired writer Paul wrote:

“Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (ESV; emp. added).

This “forgetting” in Paul’s mind was a good thing. Paul had a rough past (1 Timothy 1:13), but he wasn’t going to let that keep him down. Paul knew that, if he focused on the mistakes he made in the past, he was never going to be able to do anything productive for God with his life. With that in mind, Paul resolved to forget those things that were in his past and “press on toward the goal.”

I have no idea where you are in your life. If you’re like me then chances are that you’ve done things in your past that you’re not proud of. As Christians we know those mistakes are forgiven (Acts 22:16; 1 John 1:7), but the memory of those things may still haunt us.

I encourage you to become a forgetful Christian. Don’t let those mistakes continue to rule over your mind. Do as Paul did, forget those things that lie in your past, press on towards the goal and become the person God wants you to be. –Jack D.

Jack Dodgen is a preaching student at the Bear Valley Bible Institute of Denver. He graduates in December 2012 and is looking forward to a life filled with preaching the word of God. You can follow Jack on Twitter @jack_david and read more of his great posts on his blog.

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