We all have stories that we have told over and over again throughout our lives. Usually, it is a funny story involving family or friends that we love to tell to anyone that will listen, when we are sitting around at a family reunion or at some social event. You have told the story so many times that it plays in your head like a movie that you have seen hundreds of times.
Then the inevitable happens! You tell the story in front of one of the participants of the event you are recounting and they say, “That’s not how I remember it!” Suddenly, your whole perspective is changed and you find out that you completely messed up the facts and you have been telling the story wrong for years. Depending upon the story being told, this could be a good or bad thing!
Applying this to a spiritual principle, when you sin and ask for God’s forgiveness, it is like going back to God the next day and recounting the previous day’s sin to him. His reply would be, “That’s not how I remember it!” When you pray to him and ask his forgiveness, he wipes the slate clean. Your sins are as far as the east is from the west. It is as if you had never sinned. He does not remember confessed sin! That is Good News!
Psalms 103:12 (NLT) - “He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.”