Making Memorials | Taking Time to Reflect

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Remembering is an integral process in our walk of faith.  It helps us recall the victories. I strengthens our love for God and it reveals God’s sustaining hand over our lives. 

We bring deeper joy to our lives when we revisit those things we’ve gone through. It is then that we can recognizing our survival rate is 100%.

Let me say that again, you have survived 100% of what the enemy has thrown at you.

2 Samuel 22 We read about the last act of the life of David. In his last writings he memorializes all of his adventures, defeats and wins. He recalls all of God’s sustaining promises that held him throughout his lifetime. He testifies about all of his life’s duties and the joys and sorrows that came with each.

In hindsight can we can see the true story of God’s faithfulness and provision over the life of David.

It is in recollecting that we recognize the victories that God has brought us through in our lives. 

I like the vision that word brings me, recollecting. I picture myself bending and picking up scattered stones, turning them to see if there is still beauty in them, then tucking them back in my shoe box of treasures.

When we’re feeling especially nostalgic my husband and I will sit around and talk about the past. We talk about the people that have come across our path and how we’ve interacted with them. We remember the lean years, and the crazy beginning we had. We think of faces and friends. We remember how we helped some of them by standing by their side in hard times. Sometimes we offered them our couch, a shoulder or a listening ear. Every time we do this we are not prideful about our actions, instead, every time we talk about those things that God led us through, it is our faith that is strengthened.

We see more clearly in hindsight and can credit God’s endless faithfulness with leading and guiding us. We see His care in every detail that He ordered. We recognize where He loaned us strength. He alone acted as our sustainer.

Remembering creates a stronger bond of love.

In the looking behind we see God’s faithful acts  He continually guides us. He strengthens our love for Him by every encounter we have along the way. When we recall and recount those moments, our hearts are stirred toward God.

The same action happens when my husband and I talk about our early life and courtship. The more we talk about our shared experiences and treasured memories the more tender love we feel for one another. Our love was forged in those treasured moments. As we recollect all of the things that brought us into relationship it strengthens the bonds that sustain us in the hard times. Even now, in the troubling hours and long stretches in between success and good news our past joys and triumphs sustain us.

Remembering helps us to see God’s sustaining hand in our lives. 

If there is one thing God encourages in his word it is remembering. The Israelites constantly were commanded to leave pillars  of rocks behind them for the sake of remembering. God established festivals and events. Strung through the calendar months, held from year to year were remembering celebrations. They were instructed to pick up and examine the individual events of the past and keep them constantly before them.  The Hebrew children could not forget the things that they had been through and the successes that they had obtained through the Lord.

God does not want you to forget the battles that you have fought hard and long for. Are your victories cast aside and forgotten? This is why remembering is a vital part of of our daily walk with Christ. It helps us see that we have grown in Christ and though we are not as perfect as we hope to be we are closer to God than we were a few years ago. Establish the habit of remembering.

This week take a few minutes of your morning time to spend in remembering the good things that you have done for the people around you. See that you are a vital part of God’s plan.

If you have a prayer journal read through it and remember the prayers God has answered for you in the past.

Let me know what your favorite triumph God led you through is. You might even write out your psalm of victory like David did in 2 Samuel 22.