My security camera has a motion detector that lets people know they’re being recorded whenever they come into view. And if I ever need to, I can go back and watch the recordings to see exactly what happened. It got me thinking… Aren’t we thankful God doesn’t keep a record of our sins like that?
God isn’t storing away recordings of every wrong thing we’ve ever done, waiting to pull them up again when we stumble. And He doesn’t keep a file of our failures to remind us of how badly we’ve messed up. When we come to Him with repentant hearts and receive forgiveness through Jesus, our sins are removed as far as the east is from the west.
Think about that for a minute! There’s no limit to how far east you can travel before you start heading west, and that’s the beautiful picture David gives us of God’s forgiveness. Now, that doesn’t mean our choices don’t have consequences or that we won’t remember things we’ve done and wish we could change. But it does mean that God doesn’t hold our forgiven sins over our heads.
Sometimes we’re much harder on ourselves than God is, replaying old mistakes and allowing guilt to rob us of the joy of His grace. And sometimes people are more than willing to remind us of our past, too. But when God forgives, He doesn’t keep score! What a wonderful thing to be thankful for. We serve a God whose mercy is greater than our mistakes, whose grace reaches farther than our failures, and whose love never runs out.
