December 28th of last year, New York City held an annual event known as “Good Riddance Day.” It is the day in which all those desiring to attend from around the world take a preprinted form and write down all their mistakes, failures, depressive thoughts, negative memories, and anything else that has been holding them down and separating them from being victorious and carrying a positive attitude into the upcoming new year. They take that list and place it into a giant industrial shredding machine, never to be remembered anymore. From one year to the next we often carry old negative baggage that hinders people from experiencing the blessings inherent in our relationship with and service for Christ.
In regards to our past failures and sins, our Father God tells us that when we bring those things to Him, He removes them from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). God takes those negative and destructive events of our past and places them into His heavenly shredder never to be remembered again. God shreds sins we commit and the evils we experience, but unfortunately, we often keep bringing them up. We need a “Good Riddance Day” in which we forgive ourselves and others for the mistakes and mishaps of the past and begin looking to the good things God has for us in the future.
In Philippians 3:13-14, the Apostle Paul writes this to the believers at Philippi, “13 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, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Two Sundays ago the Church brought their Good Riddance slips to the front of the Sanctuary. The next day, each slip was pulverized in the office shredder where they belonged. Let’s leave them shredded and begin 2019 with a new clean slate. Our God is a forgiving God. He puts our past in the past, as far as the east is from the west, never to be remembered again!
Be blessed even more, have a wonderful New Year and thank you for all you do for God’s Kingdom!!