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Aneel Aranha is an author, preacher, and evangelist who has spoken to hundreds of thousands of people around the world. You can find a huge selection of his reflections, articles, sermons, songs and other resources on his website www.aneelaranha.com.

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Online House of Prayer

How Deep Is Your Love?

August 22, 2022 • Aneel Aranha • Episode 87

0:00 | 3:25

Have you ever become angry when people seem to forget the million times you have helped them and remember the one time you didn’t? What can we do?

087: How Deep Is Your Love?

Hello and welcome to The Hope Podcast. I’m Aneel Aranha. Today we are going to talk about how when someone does something wrong, we shouldn’t forget everything they did right.

Have you ever become angry when people seem to forget the million times you have helped them and remember the one time you didn’t? Or when they don’t take note of the hundred things you did right but pay heed to the one thing you did wrong?

I daresay you have because something in our fallen nature delights in looking at the bad in people rather than the good. However, can you imagine where we would be if God did the same thing to us? Fortunately for us, it is the opposite with God. He *forgets* the bad things we do, choosing to remember the good.

God declares: “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25). And: “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12).

This doesn’t mean that God chooses to have voluntary amnesia. It simply means that he does not hold these wrongdoings against us. Nor does it mean he chooses to turn a blind eye to the demands of justice. It means he didn’t make *us* pay the price (which we couldn’t pay even if we wanted to); he had *Jesus* do it for us instead.

Since we all would like to lead lives in imitation of Christ, the question is how to change and become more like him. There is a compelling piece of advice that Peter gives us in Scripture: “Above all, love each other deeply,” he writes, “because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).

Like God, we are not required to exercise voluntary amnesia either. People often do things to hurt us, and we cannot forget them entirely because the pain is too severe. However, what we can do is choose to cover what they did to hurt us, much as God chooses to cover the things *we* do to hurt *him”.

Imagine, if you will, holding a coin in your hand that represents the hurt someone has caused you, or something bad someone has done to you. If you take a handkerchief and place it over the coin, the coin remains; only now you *choose* not to see it. That handkerchief represents the deep love that Peter said we needed. The only question that remains is the one the BeeGees asked: How deep is your love?

May the Spirit be with you.