Remember

Deuteronomy 8:2, 11 “And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness…take care lest you forget the Lord your God…”

Psalm 77:3, 10-12 “When I remember God, I moan; when I meditate, my spirit faints…then I said, ‘I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High’. I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds.”

Have you ever noticed how much of our life is spent doing maintenance? We get up and shower in the morning because the effects of yesterday’s shower have faded off by the next day. We get the oil changed in our cars every couple thousand miles because it gets corrupted by daily usage of running the engine. We eat – three times a day – because our body simply won’t be sustained by just one meal. From the simple to the complex, our days are filled with daily chores and acts of maintenance.

It amazes me, though, how often we forget that the same level of maintenance is required in our spiritual lives. I find myself expecting that those moments of truly drawing near to God, feeling His presence, being enlightened or encouraged by His word to last me through a week, maybe two. But they don’t last. I have to sustain my fellowship with God by daily reading of the Word, fellowship with believers and prayer.

We’ve all experienced this truth, I’m sure. Remember when you came back from summer camp, after what many Christian circles like to call a “mountain top experience with God”? The glory fades, and if you’re not watching out for it, you suddenly find yourself back in the same old bad habits and sinful ways of thinking and behaving.

A few weeks ago, a friend shared his meditations on Psalm 77, putting it in a new light for me. What he said that day has very much served as that reminder I’ve been needing lately. The author of the Psalm begins his prayer in despair. He is such a state of discouragement that the very mention of God causes his spirit to “faint” (vs. 3). But what ends up pulling him out of this deep darkness? He intentionally sets himself to remember: to meditate on what God has done in the past. The Psalm doesn’t necessarily end with him praising God or even admitting that he’s completely out of this pit of discouragement. But it does point us to this Biblical value of “remembering”.

What is that we’re supposed to remember? The acts of God in the past. This is kinda vague, but it leaves the door wide open for a vast amount of possibilities to choose from as we try to put this principle to practice: meditate on the stories of God’s works in Scripture – Hebrews 11 is a wonderful place to start. Read a missionary biography to recall what God has accomplished in and through the lives of more contemporary believers.

But I want to take it a step further and encourage us to remember what God has done in our lives.

Have you ever had those moments of hindsight where you realized one of the reasons why God put you through a difficult circumstance? You look back at what you’ve just come out of and when you stare forward at your current circumstances, it hits you: “Oh! It makes sense now! I understand why God put me through that now!” And when this becomes clear to you, all of a sudden, it seems so much easier to trust God with your present difficulties because you know that He’s going to be using these current circumstances in your life in the same way in the years to come. Let your hindsight in these moments become foresight.

What stories do you have of God’s obvious intervention in your life? Go back to one of those “A-Ha” moments and see if you can’t recall that sense of trust it gave you, seeing the picture come together for a moment. Let it stimulate your faith for whatever you may be facing now.

And if your soul is like the Psalmist, still in too much despair to recall those stories in your own life, know that God has provided for us the hope and encouragement we need even before we knew enough to ask for it. Like a mother who knows to feed her child milk when they scream and cry, so our Heavenly Father knew in advance our need for reminders to stimulate our trust in Him and give us hope for our difficulties. And so while we were yet sinners, He gave us Christ, our Hope incarnated, the Author of our faith, who for the joy set before Him, endured the suffering of the cross. And He has set the example for us to do the same. He is our great High Priest, who is now able to sympathize with our weakness, because He Himself has been tempted in all things and yet is without sin. And He has provided for us the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth, and usher us into His presence again and again, to give us everything we need for life and godliness.

Michael Card wrote an entire album’s worth of songs reflecting on the book of Hebrews. One of the songs is called Soul Anchor. A line from this song recalls to our minds the truth of God’s Sovereign awareness of our need for hope during difficult times. “Before we call, He answers us with hope.” Our hope is there. We just have to bring ourselves back to it, time and time again.

"Remember!" He commands us. "Don’t forget! I have already accomplished much in your life and I do not change. I am faithful, steady, never changing, and the goodness I brought out of your circumstances before, and in the lives of so many gone before you, will be the same for whatever is yet to come. For I am and I work all things for the good of those who love me. Great is my faithfulness."

May you be encouraged to keep pressing on until that Day that Christ returns to take us home!