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It is very easy to forget. Children do it all the time, and so do adults. When I was a child my mother would remind me that forgetting was not a good excuse for failing to do something she had asked me to do. But why is that? Perhaps because remembering goes hand-in-hand with following instructions, living out what has been placed before you.
The acts of God are always important to remember—they have life and death consequences.
Remembering is a choice that has to be made. While there are many things that vary in their importance (for example, remembering to put the butter in the fridge versus remembering to look both ways before crossing a busy street), the acts of God are always important to remember—they have life and death consequences.
Perhaps this is why the Lord instructs his people so often to remember his works of faithfulness to them. One of the things the people had a remembrance for was their deliverance from Egypt (Passover):
Then Moses said to the people, "Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten." (Exod. 13:3)
When true remembering of God's faithfulness doesn't happen, people can fall into idolatry.
The people were called to remember God's deliverance—the salvation, care, and love he had demonstrated toward them. And the remembering of these things was to cause their hearts to draw closer to God in love and faithfulness. Yet, this true remembering did not happen, for the people fell away into idolatry. And even though they knew the stories of God's goodness and power and salvation, the remembering was only surface-level and did not penetrate to the heart.
When you read the story of Gideon in Judges 6, you are struck by the fact that Gideon knows the awesome stories about God, which his parents must have told him, but at the same time his family is involved in idol worship. True remembering internalizes God's promises and faithfulness and issues forth a changed view of life and changed way of living.
If the people of Israel had truly remembered God's promises and faithfulness, they would have trusted him, obeyed him, and clung to him in their hardships.
We are called to remember Christ's work on our behalf, his broken body and shed blood so that we might have peace with God.
What about us? We are called to remember God's faithfulness and promises each week as we worship him every Lord's Day. We are to remember our redemption, salvation from the wrath of God and from the slavery of sin, and our new position as children of God. We are called to remember Christ's work on our behalf, his broken body and shed blood so that we might have peace with God. But does this hearing of the promises affect our mind and heart? Are we truly remembering? Is it changing our view of life and way of living?
Because we cannot become better through our own effort, as even remembering is a gift from God, we must ask God to help us through the power of his Holy Spirit. We must ask that we would live out of what we know about our great and awesome God, because knowing and growing in him have life and death consequences.
Below are a few gospel truths for remembering:
For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thess. 5:9)
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace. (Eph. 1:7)
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. (Col. 1:13)
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Ayrian Yasar is associate editor of Beautiful Christian Life. This article is adapted from “Our Calling to Remember God’s Faithfulness” in BCL's June 2023 Newsletter: “Remembering God’s Faithfulness.”
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