Several months ago, before we moved to Amarillo, I was asked to do some research on purchasing a forklift. Truth for Today World Mission School in Searcy, AR., where I was working, was close to completing their new warehouse and needed a way to stack pallets of books on top of each other. They ended up buying a pallet lifter (a forklift that has to be pushed around manually).
I tell you this because I had logged into my personal Microsoft account at work and had not logged out. Even now, roughly six months later, I am still seeing advertisements for new and used forklifts.
Much like an elephant, the internet never forgets. If you ever google anything, your computer remembers and you’ll see plenty of ads about whatever it was . . . and for a long time to come!
This seemingly harmless process is called “targeted marketing.” However, sometimes if you make a mistake in a web address and visit a site unintentionally, before you realize it is the wrong site, they have you IP address and are going to be sending you advertisements.
Is it not wonderful that God is NOT like that? Is it not wonderful that if you make a mistake, He is not going to remember it and “send you advertisements” to make you keep revisiting your mistake?
On the other hand, Satan does like to remind you of your past mistakes. Satan wants you to dwell on your mistakes. Satan wants you to be so caught up with the mistakes you have made that you forget that God has forgiven you.
I once saw a statement on a t-shirt: “The next time the devil reminds you about your past, remind him about his future.”
The next time you see an ad for something that you looked at six months ago online, let it remind you that “as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12).