2 Chronicles 7:14 English Standard Version (ESV) if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
This is the Old Testament way of doing things. It was true for a time and a people who had failed to do what was necessary to maintain a good relationship with God. They would fail over and over again. The Old Testament is laden with historical examples of mankind’s failures in this relationship.
They failed to humble themselves so God had to place them in a position to be humbled against their will.
Turning to prayer and seeking God became an issue of survival. They turned from the things that got them in trouble because of the consequences of their actions. God had a history of taking them back over and over again, so they knew God would respond to their changed behavior.
That was the past.
Isaiah 43:18-19 English Standard Version
18 “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. 19 Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
God foretold of a new way, a future and in that prophecy He declared, “forget how it was done in the past”. Sadly some of them did not perceive it and when the time came, they could not forget the past. They could not put it behind them and do things the new way.
Is it possible that in our studies in the OT that we forget to put the things of the past away? We are not doing things the old way. We are doing a new thing.
Christ in us is something that had never happened prior to the Cross. In this new life we need to forget the former things. But our memories remain. So what is forgetting if it is not about memory?