Over the last few Sunday mornings, we’ve touched on just how important it is to be a people that actively remembers. The break-neck speed of western culture, our growing instinct to “scroll” or “swipe” through new content as the old slips into the archives of the digital cloud, and even some political influences, are collectively lulling our memories to sleep. We’re not a culture that “calls things to mind” often. We’d rather race forward toward the next innovation, trend, life stage, etc. All the while, our diligence to do the sometimes mundane work of “remembering” starts to atrophy.

What is so important, then, for us to remember? It’s the soul-memory of what God has done that we’re getting at in this post. Scripture is drenched with the importance of this kind of remembering. Whether it seems like a game-changer or not, incorporating this discipline into your life can tether your heart to the Lord in ways that are proven over and over in His Word.

REMEMBER GOD’S PAST FAITHFULNESS

Scripture abounds with language like this:

Psalm 77:11-15
“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. Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples. You with your arm redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph. Selah”

and…

Psalm 111:2-4
”Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them. Full of splendor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered; the Lord is gracious and merciful.”

God’s desire is for us to remember His works - what He has done. But it’s so much more than a textbook-style acknowledgement of these acts. When we “ponder”, “meditate”, and “study” what God has done, we trace the works of His hand back to the nature of His heart, where we find endless holiness, power, majesty, grace, and mercy. And once there, what else can we do but worship? This kind of remembering renews our intimacy with God.

Deuteronomy 4:9
“Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children's children…”

Jewish culture in Biblical days placed a huge value on verbally teaching history and customs in the context of the family unit. The generation of grandparents and parents diligently reclaimed moments within the routines of daily life to tell stories and testimonies of what they had seen God do, and what their ancestors had seen God do. They set up altars and celebrated feasts and festivals and observed traditions where tangible object lessons and rituals engaged all of their senses in this sacred work of remembering.

The younger generation also had a responsibility in this; from early childhood, they received the teaching and learned about the God who had been faithful to their ancestors, metaphorically taking the baton to carry on to the next generation:

Deuteronomy 32:7
”Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you.”

PRACTICAL POSSIBILITIES

Although we don’t share the same culture and customs in our context, we are still called to practice the Biblical mandate to “remember”. Here are a few possibilities for what this could look like in your family:

• Tell and hear the stories. Grandparents and parents, tell your stories of God’s faithfulness to your children. Children, ask your parents and grandparents to tell them. Some of our grandparents, aunts, and uncles lived through wars, national crises, and family tragedies. Next time you find yourself at a family gathering, ask them about the ways they saw God’s faithfulness carry them through.

• Document God’s faithfulness in your home. Keep a jar and add slips of paper as tangible evidences of God’s faithfulness as you observe it, and then read them on New Year’s Eve. Carve out a couple of minutes at the dinner table to talk about the great things God did that day. Whatever it looks like, embrace the discipline of remembering.

• Read missionary biographies & autobiographies. This is an incredible opportunity to see God’s hand at work in prior eras in history and in foreign contexts.

• Study the history of the early church. God has preserved and delivered His people and His Word through seasons of intense persecution and trial.

Remember what He’s delivered you from

Old Testament saints were quick to remember God’s deliverance from bondage to slavery in Egypt:

Deuteronomy 5:15
You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

Each of us have stories of deliverance. Every believer has been delivered from the bondage of slavery to sin.

Romans 8:2
For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

We could fill books with stories of God’s deliverance from depression, disease, anxiety, tragedy, addiction, abuse, mental illness, deep disappointments, and even complacency.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son (Colossians 1:13). He drew us up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set our feet upon a rock, making our steps secure (Psalm 40:2). He made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 5:5-6). He forgives our iniquity, heals our diseases, redeems our lives from the pit, crowns us with steadfast love and mercy, and satisfies us with good, so that our youth is renewed (Psalm 103:3-5).

He has and still is delivering us from even that which we don’t know! The psalms tell us that He is our hiding place, preserving us from trouble, surrounding us with shouts of deliverance, keeping our soul among the living, and not letting our feet slip (Psalm 32:7, 66:9). Knowing our own weaknesses, temptations, and the proclivities deep in our hearts, where would we be apart from the mercy of God?

PRACTICAL POSSIBILITIES

• Journal it out. Find 10 minutes today, and intentionally remember what He has delivered you from. If you know Jesus Christ as your Savior, start with remembering how He delivered you from living for yourself (2 Corinthians 5:15). Explore the other bonds He has broken in your life since then.

• Tell someone. A personal testimony is simply telling what God has done for you.
  

REMEMBER HOW HE SATISFIES YOUR SOUL

Every instance of sin in our lives reveals that we’ve forgotten God. Our hearts have lapsed, and for a moment, we’ve suppressed the knowledge that God is more satisfying than any hollow offering of sin. Author Jackie Hill Perry describes that first instance in the Garden of Eden: “…Eve bypassed her Creator’s sufficiency and wanted to be satisfied apart from him.” When we bypass the knowledge of God’s sufficiency for our souls, we seek satisfaction apart from Him, which always leads to sin. If we reverse the logic, we realize that the work of remembering God’s sufficiency to satisfy our souls circumvents us from searching elsewhere, and sinning. This work of remembering is more important than we may realize.

Biblical authors cry out with testimonies of God’s ability to satisfy the soul completely:

• “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Psalm 16:11)

• “And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.” (Isaiah 58:11)

• “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:26)

Our hearts need continual reminding that the best times, are the times we spend in God’s presence. May we say with the Psalmist, “But for me it is good to be near God” (Psalm 73:28a).

PRACTICAL POSSIBILITIES

• Make a list. Call to mind the specific moments where God has filled your soul to the brim and overflowing. Whether it was a worship experience, a moment outside as you drank in His creation, an instance where He made a passage of the Bible come alive in a new way, a time spent with Him in prayer, or a breakthrough moment He gave you. Remember how good it is to be near Him.

• Make small trades. In the moments you are tempted to fill your soul with entertainment, social media, or distractions, make a trade and choose something that will center your heart on God. Turn on a podcast, listen to scripture, read a book, talk with Him, or take a walk. Do the thing that brings you closer to His heart. You’ll be reminded all over again that He alone can satisfy your soul.

“Fresh Starts” are a gift straight from Heaven. The advent of a new year feels like a welcome “clean slate”, a springboard for cleaner eating, more consistent disciplines, or even reining in some areas of excess, whether it be entertainment, spending, or sugar indulgence. There’s a reason why you see myriads of new faces at the gym, seemingly overnight. New Year’s Resolutions are a kind echo of God’s perpetual invitation to choose wisdom in our daily living.

Jonathan Edwards, a pastor, writer, and deep lover of God who lived in the 1700’s, applied the discipline of resolution making to his spiritual life. Three, five, or even ten intentional objectives would have been thorough; Jonathan penned seventy - at the age of eighteen years old. You can explore his entire collection if you’d like, but here are a few selections:

• “Resolved, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt of the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it.” (Resolution 25)

• “Resolved, to be strictly and firmly faithful to my trust, that that in Proverbs 20:6, “A faithful man who can find?” may not be partly fulfilled in me.” (Resolution 32)

• “Resolved, after afflictions, to inquire, what I am the better for them, what good I have got by them, and what I might have got by them.” (Resolution 67)

• “Resolved, to inquire every night, before I go to bed, whether I have acted in the best way I possibly could, with respect to eating and drinking.” (Resolution 40)

• “Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.” (Resolution 7)

Carrying out even one of these aims would radically transform one’s life. At best, our new year’s resolutions will do just that - aid in the life-long journey of being transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2) so that we become conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, one degree at a time (2 Corinthians 3:18).

And at worst? Can there be a shadow-side to well-intentioned goal setting? Our enemy will certainly try to insert himself. He knows that human pride can poison our resolutions with a book-end approach. At the outset, pride will seduce us to attack our resolutions in our own strength, independent of the Lord’s enabling grace. And after we have fallen short in one area or another, pride will paralyze us with the accusing sting of defeat, convincing us it’s no use to continue the endeavor. Both of the enemy’s methods to use our resolutions against us remove God from the equation. At some point, most of us have probably experienced one or both of these outcomes…likely before February rolls around.

How, then, can we make resolutions resistant to the influence of pride? How can we stand in a posture of humility mingled with lion-hearted courage? How can we foster a hopeful and earnest spirit of dedication instead of a resolve laced with cynicism?

…BY Remembering the Lord.

Often in Scripture, when God’s people stand at the precipice of a challenging (or downright seemingly impossible) situation, He invites them to hit rewind. He reminds them of all the scenarios where He’s shown up on their behalf in the past - the scenarios where they didn’t stand a chance without His gracious intervention. Just as a bellows delivers invigorating oxygen to a struggling fire, God breathes a strong blast of courage into the hearts of His struggling people, not by reminding them of their own capability, but by reassuring them of His own.

In Deuteronomy, we find Moses pleading with the people under his care to do this humble work of remembering. The Israelites were getting ready to walk out of their wilderness and into the new challenges of receiving the land God had promised to them. Moses, with a tear-jerking appeal, framed their future and past with this perspective:  

Deuteronomy 1:30-31
“The Lord your God who goes before you will Himself fight for you, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.”

Images of strong protective arms, a compassionate heart, enduring strength, and sovereign foresight that could only describe a Father, reminded the Israelite people that they had been carried for the last 40 years. They couldn’t afford to forget that God was the source of their deliverance and flourishing.

We can’t afford to forget it either. We can’t afford to forget that we aren’t responsible for our own successes. We aren’t even sufficient for our own faithfulness. Even the simplest resolution we carry out is enabled by the grace of a generous Father.

The Work Of Remembering
protects our resolving
from becoming self-relying.

As we set our hearts to new resolutions, may we be a people who also, and often, set our hearts to remembering. Practically, this could look like marrying each of our resolutions to an evidence of God’s faithfulness or His character.

“This year, I’m going to workout twice a week,”

could become,

“God has given me a physical frame and sent His Spirit to live within me. Because His Spirit enables me to bear the fruit of self-control, I will depend on His grace to help me care for this bodily temple by exercising twice a week.”

or,

“This year, I want to stop giving in to anxiety,”

could become,

“God has always provided for my needs in the past. His presence with me is the foundation for my peace. This year, I resolve to take each anxious moment I encounter to Him, letting Him speak truth to me and fill me with His peace.”

If you’re a list-maker, you could simply pair each of your resolutions with a verse about a facet of God’s character or one of His promises that will remind you of His enabling grace for that goal.

At the very beginning of Jonathan Edwards’ list of resolutions, before he recorded even one objective, we find a really important prerequisite that defines each of the 70 to come:

“Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat Him by His grace to enable me to keep these resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to His will for Christ’s sake.”

As we step into renewed resolve for God’s glory and our good, let us steep all of our resolutions and goals in the rich truth that apart from Christ, we can do nothing (John 15:5), but with Him, we can do all the things He leads us to (Philippians 4:13). Let us never do the work of resolving apart from abiding.