Remember

 

I sit outside in the cool of the Florida morning, sipping my coffee and remembering. Flipping through my journal from the past year. I see His hand weaving my story together in a healing way that only He could have done. Recalling, remembering, and recounting His faithfulness throughout my journey of pain and betrayal. 

I slept past my alarms to wake up before the children to read. I fell asleep early when I had planned to read. I didn’t get a moment of quiet the day before, and I could have woken up ungrateful because I didn’t get my “list” checked off. The past week each time I had sat down to read and study Gods word, I sensed a door shutting in my spirit. I tried to read but didn’t get far and was feeling defeated. I couldn’t discern why until I felt His gentleness and heard His voice clearly; asking me to close His word and simply “remember”. He was okay with me not being in the word for a couple days. He was okay with me not setting strict times to pray.  He was okay with me getting no new revelation from His word. He was inviting me to simply remember.  To recall His hand through this past year. To see all the ways in which He came through and fulfilled promises I am beginning to now see unfold. To remember those times in His presence were more of my wounds had closed up and healed.  I didn’t need to seek some thing in order to be close with Him. I didn’t need to be doing a Bible discipline to be in His presence. Worship doesn’t have to be singing, reading His word, or even praying….It can be remembering. Remembering can be an act of worship, when done in the right heart posture. Remembering in and of itself can bring guilt, sadness, regret, or shame. But remembering to recount His nature and character and faithfulness- is what makes it an act of worship. Remembering His goodness over our lives, remembering all the ways we’ve seen Him come through. Remembering where He found us, and how He rescued us. For me this week; He has been calling me to remember. 

God was always calling the Israelites to remember. To recite and call to mind the history of their salvation. To command their souls to look back and see His faithfulness so they could look ahead with hope; whatever the circumstance looked like. They were to be grounded in the truth of who God was and the ways in which He led them like a father. To look back with a heart of gratitude as they remembered the places of oppression and bondage, and how when they cried out to Him- He came to their rescue. To remember being delivered from Egypt. To remember the journey afterward. To remember the parting of the Red Sea. To remember what happened when Pharaoh and his army came after them. To remember the journey all the way up to the Jordan. To remember the promised land God was giving to them and leading them to. To remember the blessings of faithfulness, and the results of their unbelief and disobedience along the way. Remembering was an act of faith and worship. As they stood at the edge of the Jordan, they were to look back in order to move ahead in fullness of faith and confidence in Him. As we abide in this remembering and sit in His presence, we are strengthened again for the journey ahead. 

“The Lord your God who goes before you will Himself fight on your behalf, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place.’ But for all this, you did not trust the Lord your God, who goes before you on your way, to seek out a place for you to encamp, in fire by night and cloud by day, to show you the way in which you should go.”

‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭1‬:‭30‬-‭33‬ ‭NASB1995‬‬

“You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land where you will eat food without scarcity, in which you will not lack anything; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you. “Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. He led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water; He brought water for you out of the rock of flint. In the wilderness He fed you manna which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end. Otherwise, you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.”

‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭8‬:‭2‬-‭18‬ ‭NASB1995‬‬