A TIME TO FORGET Philippians 3:13-14

At the Lord's Table we often speak of remembering, and of course, we should, if for no other reason than that Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of me."

On the other hand, when we come to the table it should also be a time of forgetting. We must not only remember God's saving grace in Christ, seen on the cross, but we must also forget the past mistakes and failures that keep us from accepting His grace and moving on toward the future that god has for us.

Anyone who competes in athletic games knows the importance of forgetting. I make a lot of bad shots as a golfer but I can't dwell on them -- I have to focus on the next shot. When the American gymnast, Paul Hamm, fell after vaulting he had to forget it and concentrate on the next event. Anyone who lives in the past will lose his future.

Paul was looking to the future when he wrote in Philippians 3:13-14, Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."

At the Lord's Table we see with double vision. We look to the past and remember his sacrifice on our behalf, but we also look to the future and anticipate our destiny with Him. As Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 11, speaking of our action in the Lord's Supper, "We proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." Remembering his death and what it means for us helps to wipe out the memory of our failures. It frees us to look to the future, to "press on toward the goal" that Christ sets before us.