What to Forget

OK, on Monday we discussed what to remember.  Now let's talk about the other side of the coin.  We need to talk about what to forget.

Most of us have embarrassing moments in our life or times when we failed.  Because these were so painful, we can recall them in very vivid detail.  I remember my junior year of high school.  All of the good athletes made the varsity football team that year.  I was stronger than most of the kids in my class and thought I would be a lock to make varsity as well.  The first week of two a days, I was even a starter on the offensive line.  But there was one practice where we were supposed to work on pass blocking.  This kid across the line from me was quicker than I was and he ran right by me and sacked the quarterback three or four plays in a row.

Not only was I demoted from a varsity starter, I was sent to the junior varsity team.  It was humiliating.  To make matters worse, when the list came out and I everyone knew I was on the JV team, a certain classmate of mine made a very vocal point of telling everyone around that I was JV.  That was even more humiliating.  When I tell this story, I can still feel part of those humiliating emotions inside me.  They aren't very big and it certainly doesn't bother me but it is still a reminder of a failure in my past.

There was another time while I was at TCU that I was trying to make an ROTC sport team called Ranger Challenge.  Now the TCU team was one of the top squads in the nation and I really wanted to make the team.  At the very first of the season, I was running pretty well and I had a good shot at making it.  Then I got hurt playing softball and ended up being a back up.  I was devastated and it sent me into a depression.  Now my friends on Ranger Challenge never said anything.  They were great guys about the whole thing but I was still embarrassed.  This even happened at least 15 years ago and I still remember it pretty well.

Yet, when I graduated from law school, I graduated Cum Laude and 4th in my class.  I certainly remember doing this but it is more of a distant memory and it only happened about 10 years ago.

So why do I remember my failures more vividly than my successes?  Because pain can stay around longer than that feeling of happiness that comes from success.  Now I can certainly tell you that after all these years, I learned lessons from both of the failures I described above and that's a good thing.  But I let my ROTC failure ruin my grades at TCU.  I let my high school failure completely shake my confidence.

So here is what we should learn from what I did.  There are certain things that we just have to choose to forget.  I'm not saying that you will completely forget those bad things that happened to you.  Obviously I remember high school and TCU to this day.  But we do have to choose to let go of what happened and we definitely have to learn to "forget" the pain involved.  If we don't let go of those bad events in our lives, we will never have an opportunity to reach for and then celebrate success.

If we continue to hold onto and relive those bad memories too long, it's like trying to swim with cement shoes on.  It will just keep dragging us down.  We will never be able to soar to the heights God intended if we continue to focus on our failures.  Now I am not telling you to pretend that bad things didn't happen and I'm also not telling you to never be sad when bad things happened.  That would be ridiculous.  But what I am saying is after you have had some time to feel sad, let it go.  Don't go around talking to yourself or other people about your failure, let it go and start climbing to the next place God has in store for you.  No matter how bad things are in your life right now, God has a good plan for your life.

So let me sum this up by saying that there are going to be bad circumstances in our lives that we have to deal with.  I know they are there.  However, if we keep our focus on all the bad things that happen to us and never choose to focus on the great things we have done or that God has done for us, we will never achieve the full potential God has for our lives.

That's another Opinion of the Minion

What to Remember

Today I want to talk to you about what to remember.  In my next blog, we will discuss what not to remember but let's talk about what we should remember.

I have read the bible many times and one of my goals for every year is to read the bible from cover to cover.  There are many things that I don't completely understand about the bible but one thing I do love is that God shows me more and more about him every time I read it.

So today, I want to tell you about something that confused me for years.  I would love to tell you that I am one of those guys who doesn't need to be told anything twice, that I retain it all the first time through but that isn't the case.  However, most of the time if you tell me a story, I will remember the whole thing.  Sometimes not in great detail but I generally remember most of it.

Well, the Bible repeats the story of God delivering Israel from Egypt several times.  As a matter of fact in the Psalms, David references it multiple times.  Moses even made the children of Israel learn songs about it.   I know that God wanted the Israelites to teach this to their children and I thought for a long time it was just a history lesson.  I thought that God wanted generation after generation of Israelites to know about him and that's certainly true.  But why did he repeat this story so many times in the Bible.  Was it because He knew many of us wouldn't read our Bible and He just hoped that if we opened it a few times we would stumble onto the truth?  Nope, God doesn't work this way.

Now I can't tell you that this is the only reason that God put that story in the Bible so many times but I can tell you one reason that it shows up over and over and over.  See, when David was retelling this story over and over, I locked onto one reason.  He said that he was stirring himself up by telling this story.  When David got in a hard place and it looked hopeless, he would start thinking about all the times that God delivered him in the past and it would increase his faith.  That is one reason God tells this story so many times.  He wants us to stir up our faith in him.  When we see places where it looks like everything is hopeless, we can go back and say, "Wait a minute.  When I was in a situation that looked hopeless before, God delivered me."  I can tell you that there have been many circumstances in my life when I didn't see a way out.

That feeling of anxiety and hopelessness sucks.  I don't like it.  But I can tell you that if I start looking back at all the times that God has delivered me in the past, I start thinking about the time when I needed gas for my car and God provided it, I start thinking about the time when I needed extra money and a check for a few hundred dollars showed up in my mailbox, I start thinking about the time when it looked like my business might fall apart and God supernaturally changed things in my favor, I start thinking about the time when I felt lonely and God brought someone into my life, I start thinking about when I didn't know what to do with my children and God showed me the way.  It's happened again.  I've blogged myself happy.  When I think about His goodness and what He's done for me, I get happy.  But guess what, there are still situations in my life where I don't know what to do, I sit back and remember all the times that God has brought me through before and those feelings of helplessness and anxiety go away because I know He will do it again.

So I want to encourage you.  If you are facing a situation that you don't know what to do with, start remembering all the times that the Lord delivered you or made a way where there didn't seem to be a way.  Start thinking about how He was always there when you called out.  It will make the situation you face now grow smaller as His provision grows larger in your life.

Now some of you may not have many places to draw on for those types of memories.  Don't worry, read.  The Bible is full of places where God delivered people.  Start reading those and mediating on those.  He promised that if He did it for someone in the Bible, He will do it for you.  Test God.  Remind Him of His word and what He promised.  That's not arrogance, that's faith.  God is looking around all over the earth for people who will have faith in Him and His word.

That's another Opinion of the Minion