Your Pain
One of the great preachers of the 1900s was William Sangster. If you've been listening to my devotions for a while, you may have heard me speak about him before.
I read a sermon of his a short time ago which really impacted me. It's called Remember to Forget.
Sangster says this: “I want to convince you that precious though a good memory is, the power to forget is hardly less precious as well.” And you know, maybe some of you are saying, “Oh boy, I can forget stuff. I can forget all sorts of stuff all day long!” But there are certain things that we often should forget that Sangster talks about.
Learning to Let Go of Past Pain
He hangs a whole sermon on Genesis 41:51, when Joseph names his firstborn son Manasseh, which means “God has made me forget”. And Joseph says in this verse, “it’s because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household.”
Now Joseph had been through all sorts of pain in his life. He’d been thrown into a pit and sold by his own brothers. He’d been falsely accused of all sorts of bad things, and had been thrown into prison because of that. But now it was all behind him, and instead of being bitter, he was able to say, “God has made me forget it.”
How God Heals the Memory of Hurt
Now of course he remembered all that stuff that had happened, but the pain of it all is what he was able to forget.
Sangster compares this to a scar on his own finger. He says: “As I write, I can see on the top of my finger a scar. It is faint and barely perceptible, but it is there. I remember how it came. I nearly chopped the top of that finger off when I was a child. And I have some dim recollection of the hospital, but it’s very dim. I’ve forgotten the pain. The scar is faintly there, but I hardly notice it. It is all but forgotten.” And then he says “there are things in our past that can be as dim as that. The pain endured. The lesson learned. Let it now be forgotten. Face the future with courage, cheerfulness, and hope. Give God the chance and He will make you forget all that. It would be harmful to remember.”
Taking Your Pain to God
If you’re holding on to bitterness, if you’re holding on to anger because of past pain, will you let it go to God? Of course, you may not forget the actual experience, but let God heal the pain. Let God take away the intensity of the hurt. He can. He is willing, if you are.
Sangster says that “mercy can take the edge off your sorrow. The scar may still be there, a great rent across your heart, but it’s not an open wound. There’s no gangrene in it. God has made you forget.”
And so that’s my prayer for you today, friends, that you will take your pain to God and ask Him to help you forget that pain. I believe He’s willing and able to do that in your life if you come to Him in faith.
Modern medical technology saved my life, but I never forgot that God deserves the ultimate glory for my healing. Today, remember to thank God for every good gift in your life.