One of the many things that annoy me about Christians is when they forget where God has picked them from. When they forget that they were once blind and lost. When they stand judging others, especially those they consider unworthy of God’s grace or salvation. Christian amnesia. It’s a spiritual paralysis that always leaves me in wonder.
At the core of Christian amnesia is forgetfulness. All the victims of Christian amnesia have one universal symptom. They forgot about God’s promises, goodness, faithfulness, and deliverance. And what makes us forget is pride. Thinking we are better than others or that we no longer need God and that we can make it without Him. Sin in our lives also makes us forget. Sin causes us to lose our connection with God.
Christian amnesia is the partial or total loss of memory about God’s benefits in our lives. It happens when someone suffers a brain injury, shock, or serious disease that affects their brain. When it comes to Christian amnesia, a believer suffers from it when they completely forget about God’s goodness in their lives.
It often occurs during tough times, the wilderness seasons, and during those valleys of the shadow of death moments. It also occurs when our pride makes us think we are better than others, more deserving than others. And like the people confronting the woman caught in the act of adultery, it makes us pick and throw the first stone at those we consider unworthy.
Christian amnesia will depress, discourage, and frustrate you. It will make you a “miserable Christian” because it will ultimately turn into a spiritual paralysis. It makes you focus on you and not on God.
The spiritual paralysis will come from constantly listening to the lies of condemnation from the devil. When he torments you with an accusing, doubting conscience, causing you to mercilessly beat yourself up. Once you forget about God’s goodness, you eventually become a miserable, weak Christian.
There’s Nothing New Under the Sun
If there are people in the Bible who suffered from chronic amnesia, it’s the Israelites. God did mighty things before their eyes. But they would always forget and worship idols. They would drown so deeply in their idolatry until a crisis occurred. Then they would recover from their amnesia and cry out to God.
I read their encounters with judgment in my heart asking myself “How can they do that?”
And the Holy Spirit will nudge me and remind me that I’m no different from them. Countless times, I have forgotten about what God has done in my life and leaned on my understanding. When it comes to Christian amnesia, no believer is immune. At one point or the other in our Christian walk, we have suffered from it.
Thank God that He is God and not a man, that He is full of grace and mercy. If it were up to me, I would have given up on the Israelites, and wiped them from the face of the earth immediately. I would have given up on myself too.
Don’t Forget
In the book of Esther, there was a plot to kill the Jews, and her uncle told her about it. Esther had a choice to either do something or ignore it because, after all, she was now a queen. She chose to be a solution; she chose to stand with her people.
Unfortunately, many of us if we were in Esther’s shoes, would choose to ignore because we think since we are in the palace, the outside doesn’t matter. We become indignant to others, to our families and friends. We start seeing them as a bother, as broken, damaged, as beyond His grace, love, and mercy, and not worthy of His blessings.
It’s sad how we suffer from amnesia quickly.
God’s goodness, faithfulness, and blessings are too great for you to forget. It sounds so easy and yet we keep on falling into the trap of forgetting. The devil lays this trap before us when he whispers to us that we ain’t worth Go’s benefits. And we start to doubt and question God’s goodness in our lives.
Once we start to question and doubt, forgetting becomes easy. Then we start speaking the language of defeat, discouragement, and disappointment. With such a mindset, we find ourselves constantly suspicious and rejecting God’s goodness and His motives.
The devil aims to drain you and cause you to live a defeated Christian life. If he can’t destroy you, he will destroy your witness and testimony. He will attack your mind. No wonder the Bible urges us to renew our minds. The battle is in the mind.
We fight Christian amnesia by remembering. Remember God’s promises, faithfulness, goodness, and loving-kindness. Don’t take your eyes off God. His goodness should be evident in your life regardless of what’s happening around you.
And if you forget everything He has ever done in your life, let John 3:16 be a constant reminder. When you remember that God loved you so much that He gave His Only Son, you’ll go through whatever life throws at you with grace. Even in brokenness, you’ll be gracefully broken. We live in a broken world; it doesn’t mean or make God broken or evil.
Prayer
May God give us His eyes to see people as He sees them and who they are. May we always be reminded of His goodness. And as we remember your goodness, may we not fall into the trap of Christian amnesia.
