New Year means many things .to many people: For some, sending and
receiving gifts and greetings. For others, festivities, feasting, fun and frolic. For yet
others, a time of reckoning and making new resolutions. As for our loving God, He
wants us to enjoy His new blessings He is going to shower upon us abundantly in the
New Year. To prepare us to receive these blessings, He pleads with us saying,
"Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old"(lsa.43: 18).
By the grace and help of God we want to consider seven things we should cease to
remember, to enable us to enter into His full blessings, in the ensuing year.

Our wonder-working God can do "great things past finding out"(Job 9:10).
What is impossible with men is possible with God (Luke18: 27). God, "with whom is
no variable-ness, neither shadow of turning"(James 1:17) says, "Behold, I will do a
new thing; now it shall spring forth ~ shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in
the wilderness, and rivers in the desert" (lsa.43: 19). He wants us to forget our past
losses, sorrows and sufferings, as He is going "to do a new thing in our lives. The
enemy wants us to think always about our past disappointments and discouraging
situations. In life's battles we are many a time wounded within ourselves. But our
compassionate Lord pours fresh oil and heals our wounds (Psa.92: 10). Some people
seek the help of fortune-tellers, drugs and tranquilizers and soon find that these can
neither assuage their grief nor allay their fears. But the new oil of the Lord does! The
Lord fills us with hope, confidence and courage to face our future. He says, "I know
the thoughts that I think toward you...thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you
an expected end"(Jer.29: 11). Someone may say, "There is no hope for me". But in
God, there is a future, full of hope for everyone. When we are drifting along without
any direction in life, lost and confused in this wilderness-life, our loving Lord can
make a way miraculously and bring us out of every confusion. If some of us feel
worn out and fed up of life, He can cause refreshing rivers to flow in our desert-like
lives to quicken us. Let us forget our past sorrows, suffering and losses and keep
looking to Him and rely on Him whole-heartedly with faith, claiming Isa.43: 19
throughout the coming year.

We should next forget our past associations. We find in Psa.45: 10' 11,
"forget also thine own people, and thy father's house; so shall the king greatly desire
thy beauty: for he is thy Lord". God's clarion call to Abraham was very clear -"Get
thee out of thy country and from thy kindred"(Acts7: 3). He took his kindred against
God's specific call- he took Terah, his father and Lot, his nephew with him; perhaps
under the color of an excuse that one was too old and the other too young to be left
behind! After Terah's death, the Lord repeated His call for separation again. "Get
thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred"(Gen.12: 1). God's call is without any
compromise and is constant and consistent. This time, he took Lot with him and
there had to be a strife between them to separate them (Gen.13:8). Family ties and
friendship with unsaved and carnal people hinder God's great purposes for us. Unless
we learn to forget our past worldly associations, God cannot be pleased with us.

Thirdly, the past traditions we once were steeped deeply in, can hinder the purpose
and blessing of God. The Lord Jesus Christ had to pay a great price by shedding His
precious blood, in order to redeem us from our past vain traditions and customs.
"...ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain
conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of
Christ"(1 Pet.1 :18, 19). Our caste-systems, observing good and bad omens and
auspicious and inauspicious times and days, have nothing to do with a child of God.
Instead of worshipping and serving the Lord sincerely and in the Spirit, giving place
to rituals and ceremonies must be done away with. We should see what the Word of
God says and not what our forefathers followed.

Our past self-seeking and self-satisfying ways must be forgotten as a fourth
prerequisite for God's great purposes to be fulfilled in our lives. The gracious Lord
saved Lot when He destroyed Sodom. But Lot's wife "looked back" and became "a
pillar of salt"(Gen. 19:26). The Lord Jesus Christ has warned in Luke 9:62, "No man,
having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God".
Paul could count what things were gain to him to be loss for Christ (Phil.3: 7). He
could press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus
because he forgot those things he had left behind (Phil.3: 13, 14).

The fifth thing we should not remember is our past accomplishments and
achievements. Glorying over the past to gratify our ego is grievous in God's eyes.
Paul, the great Apostle said of himself, I labored more abundantly than they all: yet
not I, but the grace of God" (1 Cor.15: 10). A soldier who always finds pleasure in
rehearsing his past victories is not fit for future exploits. Samson said, I will go out
as at other times before, and shake myself". But "he wist (knew) not that the Lord
was departed from him"(Jud.16: 20). In an automobile there are two glasses -the
smaller one to see the rear and the larger one to see what lies ahead. Our attention
should be more upon the future things to be attended to, rather than our past.

Sixthly, one has to forget his past worldly pleasures. Otherwise, it would be
as "The dog is turned to his vomit again; and the sow that was, washed to her
wallowing in the mire"(2 Pet.2: 22). At the time of their rebirth, some people in their
first love and fervent devotion to the Lord throw away all useless magazines, dirty
books and novels, cigarette packets, snuff-boxes and indecent costumes. After
sometime, it is so painful to see the things they had thrown away, finding their way
again into their lives!

Our Heavenly Father wants us, lastly, to forget our past failures. To forgive
our failures, rebellion and sins, the Lord Jesus went to the cross and shed His
precious blood. "In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the
forgiveness of sins"(Col.1: 14). When a sinner turns away from his sins, believes on
the Lord Jesus as his Saviour and invites Him into his heart, after confessing his sins
to Him, he receives the assurance of the forgiveness of his sins and is set free from
all sinful bondage. When the Lord forgives our sins, He forgets them. What He has
forgotten, we should never try to remember again. "...their sins and their Iniquities
will I remember no more"(Heb.8:12). One year has come and gone! If you are still
struggling with your guilty conscience, confess: your sins to the Lord Jesus and
accept Him as your. Lord and Saviour. Don't postpone this decision, since "now is the
day of salvation" (2 Cor.6: 2). May our loving Lord Jesus Christ help us to start this
few Year forgetting these seven things, to come into the full enjoyment of His grace,
mercy and peace!