It was Saturday night and James, my eight-year-old, was completing his daily ritual of writing in his journal before bedtime. His brothers were asleep, so I tiptoed into the room and whispered: “Time to turn that light off and go to bed; it’s late.”
“Ok. I’m almost finished.”
“What are you writing about, anyway?”
“THE GAME!” He answered as if there could not possibly be anything else worth writing about on that particular Saturday, and he couldn’t understand why anyone would even ask. Of course! He was writing about THE GAME. I should have known that.
I asked him to read to me what he had written about THE GAME. Here’s what he wrote:
“October 27, 1996. Today, we had our first baseball game. Our team is Apple Computers. I got a home run. We won the game 13 to zero. The other team was Yellow Pages. I played shortstop.”
He played baseball. His team won. He hit a home run. That’s about all that really matters to an eight-year-old Little Leaguer.
He hit his home run the third time he batted. He was so proud of his big hit that he conveniently forgot about the other two times he batted. It’s amazing how selective memory is developed at such an early age.
Since James decided to forget his first two times to bat, I decided not to remind him that he struck out both times. I told him that I was really proud of him. I kissed him on the forehead, turned off his light, and tiptoed out of the room.
As I lay in bed that night, I thought about how glad I am to serve a God who records our home runs and “forgets” our strikeouts. I’m so thankful He doesn’t constantly remind us of all our dumb decisions, bad attitudes, and past sins.
I’m not at all suggesting we should live in unreality and pretend we never do anything wrong. Spiritually speaking, we can only forget our strikeouts after we repent and receive God’s forgiveness. Our conscience is there to make sure we never forget until we experience real repentance.
Here’s my point: Once we face and confess our sins, our God chooses to forgive and purify us from all unrighteousness (I John 1:9). He chooses to remove our sins as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). He chooses to hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19). Because of the blood of Jesus, we don’t have to live in sin, defeat, guilt, and condemnation any longer. In short, God forgives and forgets.
You say, “That sounds too good to be true!” Jeremiah said it like this: For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember his strikeouts no more. It’d be a good idea for us to forget them, too.
I love my sons when they hit home runs and when they strike out. Of course, they are much happier when they hit home runs. Striking out is never much fun. The spiritual parallel is obvious. God loves us when we are living the life of victory and when we are walking in defeat—when we hit homeruns and when we strike out. His love is constant, no matter how poorly we perform. The difference is that it is much more fun for us when we are hitting home runs and living the life of victory!
Remember, we are destined to be more than conquerors, not because we never lose but because He loves us whether we win or lose (Romans 8:37).