Remembering to Forget

Psalms 45:10-11 (NKJV)
10 Listen, O daughter, Consider and incline your ear; Forget your own people also, and your father's house;
11 So the King will greatly desire your beauty; Because He is your Lord, worship Him.

Psalm 45 is a well that I return to on a regular basis. While Hosea is my favorite book (for reasons I won’t share now), Psalm 45 is my favorite Biblical chapter, loaded with a prophetic and poetic picture of a bride making herself ready for her king, soon to be husband.
Vs. 10-11 are sticking out to me today. We often talk of the cost of following Jesus, meaning we must lay down the things and people that are important to us. Jesus talks about leaving your father and mother, your own people for His cause. He says that everyone who pays this price will receive many-fold over what has been given up!
While the cost is different from person to person, the principle is the same: this is going to cost you everything. For this young lady in this chapter, she had her own people and her own family, and she was called to leave it all behind for a life with the King. However, this Scripture takes it a step further: not only do you leave, but you forget. This is important because if you do not forget, your heart hasn’t truly left those things behind, and you are prone to return to your old life.
This beautiful bride has just paid a great price: she left everything she knew and loved behind. But imagine if she had lived her life in regret, in constant mourning over what she had lost, so much so that it effected the way she lived her present life. What if she had dwelt on how good it was to live a comfortable life, or the sins that brought her flesh comfort, or the people she loved dearly? The king would lose desire for her beauty, for her intimacy, because her heart belongs to something that she already left behind. This is why the writer saw it so vitally important to tell the daughter to FORGET, not just leave it behind.
This does not literally mean that you just forget about everything, as if you had no past at all. It simply means that you live your life in such a way that what you left behind does not overcome your love for God. It means that you choose to not be regretful (even though you might feel regret), to not meditate on what you have lost, but Who you have gained. It means that even though you mourn and travail for the people you have left behind, you are prayerful and hopeful for the day that they will be a part of the kingdom.
I might not know what you have left behind, but we all have something or someone. You’ve left it all behind…
But remember to forget…
Because the King desires your beauty!