When I forget who I am.
If you want a RECAP you’re gonna need to read this blog here, and then this one too.
More often than God would like, I fall short of his glory, and in my stress, I’d lose myself.
That phrase. Lose yourself. You can lose yourself in your thoughts. The music. The moment. I’m not about to start spitting M&M bars but there are times when I’m falling into that sunken place… and I’m trying to find myself in other people. The things of this world.
God will be the first thing on my bio but his pleasure was the last thing on my mind.
I’ll put JLM (Jesus Loves Me) on my story yet you’ll have to go five chapters back in my life to find him. 📚
What I found out is that Google‘s dictionary breaks down the verb ‘forget’ in 
very distinct ways.
So give me a Chance, I’ll break these down, and apply it to the holy book. Feel free to colour in the blanks. God is all we got.
IF YOU EVER FIND THE FATHER YOU BETTER LOVE HIMMMM
failure to remember
Ah fam, I forgot what I was gonna say you know
- Proactive interference is when an old memory makes it more difficult or impossible to remember a new memory. (Cherry, 2018)
God forbid, nothing is impossible with God. Right? WAIT, VEGGIE TALES FAM OGGSSSS BOB AND LARRRY AHHHH MAN GOOD TIMES
“I forgot what John 3:16 says”
Solution? Get to know God. I don’t care if you’ve been in the Church game for 30 years and you’re only 15 years old.
When I started spending more time to learn about my faith it slowly replaced the old information of my own understanding as I began to trust in his word more.
There’s a reason why I’m able to recite Ne-Yo So Sick & Mario Let me Love You simultaneously. Because I listened to it over and over again.
You ever find it interesting how if you stick around someone or a group of people long enough your languages are in sync?
inadvertently neglect to do, bring, or mention something.
‘Ah snap I forgot to read my bible today’
Growing up in Sunday School as a kid, one of the songs I was raised with was..
READ YOUR BIBLE PRAY EVERY DAY 👏🏾 PRAY EVERY DAY 👏🏾 IF YOU WANT TO GROWWWWW
Majority of my Sunday school classes came in a corridor of Squash rooms in a Leisure Centre in Islington.
A place where I learnt the New Testament Song, stories of Jonah, Shadrach, Meschach and all them man there. Like I mentioned in Part 2, I had enough evidence to suggest that reading your bible every day helps grow my relationship with God.
What I didn’t realise that it not only improves, but also reduces (or even prevents) backsliding in the faith.
Picture your WWG (walk with God) like a treadmill in the gym at a relative speed.
What happens when you stop? You fly off. You stopped because something else has caught your eye. A woman in a sports bra & yoga pants or how you’re still miles away from looking like Michael B. Jordan.
I've passed him time ago still
Regardless, God is no longer your priority. He’s not at the centre of it all. He’s not your treasure. You even compare him to others at this point.
Peter didn’t intend to deny Jesus (despite being warned in Luke), he just forgot that Jesus was bigger than his fear and earthly consequences. Same way Jesus is bigger than any distraction good or bad in this world.
He didn’t intend for it to happen. It just did.
- Retroactive interference occurs when new information interferes with your ability to remember previously learned information. (Cherry, 2018)
It poses a huge distraction in my faith. So as a result, focus is lost.
I used the reference of a treadmill because if you’re not on pace with the belt, if you’re not strapped into your faith you’ll fly off. And often when someone flies off it’s usually with a bang, a concussion.
Note how concussions aren’t always noticed right away and aren’t a quick fix. With God, we only realise we’ve forgotten him in our discussions after our mind ‘recovers’.
deliberately cease to think of.
Aha, see this is probably the most brutal one as it’s more than just not being able to recall who you are or who God is to you.
This form of forgetting is often caused by trauma or a really bad experience that has hurt us, so we take conscious steps to forget about it.
In a WWG sense, God is a ruler who gives but also takes (Job 1:21). And when people in our lives are gone, or when trials have finessed me, I have a human tendency to make God the reason to my problems and other people’s problems that have bothered me.
So now I’ve made God the reason why my life is a mess. Why the devil is knocking on my door and why I might as well fall down on the floor. Why the news always negative. I don’t want that energy so I take the steps to remove him from my equation.
Woah making up your own jargon now bro?
So you end up forgetting who he is to you, and as a result you forget who you are.
‘Forget all this Jesus stuff mate, what has he even done for you lately?’
This is often the thought in my head when things are going wrong or when Temptation FC visits The Emirates of your life.
It’s making the active decision to remove God from your mind so you can focus on worldly pleasures. The masturbation. The drunkenness, the indulgence of things that have persuaded you that this is what living your best life really is.
When I can’t find myself, you’ve got a way of finding me. – Timbo
Forgetting who you are is essentially losing the location of your identity. You’ve misplaced it somewhere in your congested mind. Forgotten where the true you is.
What I love about this is that God knows exactly where we are. He knew the whole time.
I remember as a kid I’d get lost running around till I got lost somewhere. My Dad collects me out of nowhere and I’m thankful to him for finding me.
“How did you find me?”
Find out in the next blog!
Actually, I’m messing with y’all. Let’s even go a bit deeper – You’ve got a way of finding me.
When God finds you, it’s not just him reaching out to you in your dire state. He also finds your true self in him.
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you. – Isaiah Forty Nine Fifteen.
He brings you back to him and with the tools to be you again. And like the famous advert says:
You’re not you when you’re hungry.
You’re not you when you’re craving earthly desires, craving sex or you thirsting on the gram. You know that ain’t you. For some, that wasn’t even you before you met Christ. Or a snickers bar.
Your WCW doesn't know who Mr Bean is still
neglect to behave in an appropriate way. (BONUS)
“I’m sorry babe,
this wasn’t me.
This ain’t me.”
This is almost the full acknowledgement of forgetting who you are. You know you don messed up. You’ve ticked every reason why men are called trash, you’ve ticked every box as to ‘why people don’t trust Christians’. It’s an accumulation of the .
If we don’t come back to God, it doesn’t look good
“When that vantage point becomes the lowest we can even sink, everything else will always sink, everything else will always look up. In dying to ourselves, we truly find life.”
And Psalm 119:93 back the last part of that quote.
“I’m sorry Lord for the things I’ve made it.
But it’s all about you.”
And during that moment, you remember who God is.
As God reminds you who he is again.
TBC.