Many Christians – even though they’ve committed their lives to the Lord – nevertheless struggle with remorse and guilt because of past sins and failures.
- A young man is haunted by the memory of a violent crash where he was grossly negligent – an accident which caused his girlfriend her life;
- An elderly woman lives a defeated life because she can’t forget an illicit affair she had more than fifty years ago;
- A husband is ridden with guilt because his wife suddenly died before they had an opportunity to patch up a stormy disagreement;
- A single parent — a supermarket cashier — is remembering the times she “dipped into the till” to supplement her insufficient income, and even though she’s confessed the wrong to her employer, she is plagued by the whispers and avoidances of other employees;
- A middle-aged man withdraws from the people in his church because he feels such remorse about his past infidelity – a sin that broke up his home;
- A young lady is under psychiatric care because she can’t forgive herself for having an abortion.
Paul the Apostle struggled with guilt and remorse! When he remembered the time in his life when he was persecuting Christians; when he was slandering the Church; when he was doing everything in his power to stamp out Christianity; etc. – he could have easily succumbed to defeat and withdrawal. Instead, he fixed his eyes on the “Goal” and or. the rest of the race yet before him.
He said it this way:
“But this one thing I do, FORGETTING those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
A wise sage once said that Christians should seek to erase from their memory the sins which God has erased from their record — and I would agree!
January/February 1986
