“All glory and praise to the God of all grace, who hast brought us and sought us and guided our ways. Hallelujah!”1
IN LIFE THERE are things we forget to remember, and there are things we remember that we need to forget. Why is it that you can remember the anniversary your husband forgot eight years ago, but you forget how God miraculously provided an answer in the midst of a desperate situation? Or why can you remember the person who misused you in a business deal many moons ago, but you don’t remember the time God opened a door for a new contract when you were under the gun to meet a quota? You’ve forgotten that you used to cry out and plead with God to provide you with a godly spouse. Now you only remember that he or she didn’t clean the bathroom or take out the trash! Am I making the picture clear?
Why as men can we remember who won the Super Bowl in 1977 or how many home runs Sammy Sosa hit 1998, but we can’t remember to pray with our children or tell our wives how beautiful they look? It is easy to forget the important things and remember the unimportant things, but you must remember the important things and forget the unimportant things. You must make a choice to remember the things God has done for you, and you must also make a choice to forget those things or situations in life that have wronged you.
The power of your memory and the interaction with your brain is amazing. In the simplest form scientists have learned that a memory is retrieved by the communication between what is called the synapses and neurons, which send and receive electrical signals and act as the pathways and receptors for information in your brain. Without getting too technical, when you remember something, neurons fire down signals to synapse pathways, which in turn fire signals to other neurons. This particular sequence represents a memory. I found it so interesting to learn that scientists have actually been able to stimulate memory and enable people to “relive” experiences from the past by poking around in their brains with electric probes and starting this interaction between the synapses and neurons.
When you remember things that are unimportant, you have to spend the time and energy focusing on that memory in order to re-create that “pathway” mentioned above in your brain for those thoughts to easily be recalled. Without the pathway those memories are forgotten. The things you’ve forgotten are not brought up often because that pathway between neurons and synapses in your brain has not been traveled very often. The recall of and focus on memories is what makes them permanent in your brain. What I’m saying is that when you remember things you need to forget, you’ve spent time focusing on them and recalling them from your brain. You need to spend time focusing on the things that are important. You must build memorials in your life to remember the good things and the God things. Otherwise they are easy to forget.
If you’re like me there are certain days in history that will forever be etched into your heart. September 11, 2001, has been and will be one of those days in my life. I’ll never forget getting a phone call to quickly turn on the television. As I sat and watched the first plane fly into tower number one, the horror, hurt, and handicap I felt were surreal and overwhelming. America was forever changed—how we fly, how we interface with the Middle East, our military . . . Words such as “we’ll never forget” began to be included in country songs and television commercials, and the process of erecting a memorial began. Ten years later to the day a memorial was opened to the families of those fallen heroes who lost their lives in the tragedy of 9/11, which was felt by America but experienced around the world. I watched as mothers, sons, fathers, grandparents, daughters, wives, and husbands wept as they walked through and found their loved one’s name artistically carved into stone in memory of the life they gave up, some voluntarily and some involuntarily.
Memorials are powerful. Memorials are set up to honor. Memorials are tangible pieces of history because, as people, we tend to forget. Sure my generation might never forget what happened on 9/11, but my sons, who didn’t share that memory, might not remember the importance of that day, and my grandchildren will only read about the events that happened on 9/11 in a history book. Memorials connect generations and remind us of what could easily be forgotten.
Memorials are so important to God that, on multiple occasions, He instructed His people to erect a memorial or to make an altar in memory of what He had done for that generation. In Joshua 4, following the miraculous exodus from Egypt when the Israelites crossed on dry ground, God instructed the Israelites to build a memorial.
In Joshua 4:1–7 read how God instructed the Israelites once they had crossed the river:
When all the people had crossed the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, “Now choose twelve men, one from each tribe. Tell them, ‘Take twelve stones from the very place where the priests are standing in the middle of the Jordan. Carry them out and pile them up at the place where you will camp tonight.’”
So Joshua called together the twelve men he had chosen—one from each of the tribes of Israel. He told them, “Go into the middle of the Jordan, in front of the Ark of the LORD your God. Each of you must pick up one stone and carry it out on your shoulder—twelve stones in all, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. We will use these stones to build a memorial. In the future your children will ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you can tell them, ‘They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the LORD’s Covenant went across.’ These stones will stand as a memorial among the people of Israel forever.”
—NLT
God told the Israelites, one person from each tribe, to go and grab a stone from the middle of the Jordan River and bring it with them to the other side. In essence God said, “Go and grab a memory from when you were right in the middle of your mess, when you weren’t sure how it was all going to work out and there seemed to be no solution. Take a stone right from the middle of the river. Take one of those stones, and each of you bring it here and build a memorial, so that when the future generations see this pile of twelve stones and they ask why they are there, you’ll be able to say, ‘You see, there was a time when we had no idea how we were going to cross the river, and we thought it was over, but God made a way when there seemed to be no way!’” Your children need to know the things God has done for you. Your future generations need to know that it took some faith and it took some fighting, but God saw you through, and your memorials are a reminder to His faithfulness and provision.
When we got home from the hospital, Josiah was inundated with posters and cards and pictures hung all around the house from neighbors and family who flew into town to help. We’ve since created a memorial book for Josiah with pictures of him in the hospital, pictures of him wearing his neck brace, pictures of the posters saying “Miracle Boy,” and pictures of Josiah post-healing and playing basketball in the gym with his trainer. We put together a memorial for Josiah to always look back and remember what God brought him through and how significant his injures could have been if it wasn’t for the hand of God on his life. Josiah will always have an altar and a tangible point of contact to show his children and his children’s children how God’s faithfulness covered him. A memorial can be a point of contact for your faith and a reminder that if God brought you through once, He can bring you through again!
Remembering what God has done and setting up memorials for you and your family is a valuable place to stand when life doesn’t go as planned or, for that matter, when life does go as planned. When you look back and remember God’s faithfulness in your life, your faith is spurred to know that God is going to continue to be faithful to you in the future. Communion is the most important memorials for the Christian faith.
If you remember, the original Communion or Last Supper was celebrated with Jesus and His disciples right before Jesus went to the cross to be crucified. The Last Supper was a celebration honoring both what Jesus had already done and what Jesus was about to do at Calvary. Read in Luke 22:19 where Luke gives a recount of that night’s Communion and Jesus’s final words:
He took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it into pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this to remember me.”
—NLT
Jesus told His disciples that it was the last time He would share a meal with them until His return. Communion is a reminder of what Jesus did at Calvary and a reminder that He will one day return for His bride, the church. Communion connects the old and the new, the past and the future, and it is a reminder of our soon coming reunion with Jesus Christ! I love the way the Message Bible states 1 Corinthians 11:26:
What you must solemnly realize is that every time you eat this bread and every time you drink this cup, you reenact in your words and actions the death of the Master. You will be drawn back to this meal again and again until the Master returns. You must never let familiarity breed contempt.
I would be remiss if I didn’t take so much of a brief minute to touch on the fact that your life, your memorials, your “it’s not over” moments, both the victories and the pain, are combining piece by piece, forming your legacy. Your legacy is the information that will be passed from one generation to another, giving an exposé on your character and the choices you made. Who you are and the life you led will speak after you are gone. The decisions you make, the thoughts you think, and the actions you take are all being noted as a conglomerate story, soon to be called your legacy. This life is “but a fleeting moment,” and the choices you make—the choice to not give up and to persist in the face of adversity—will outlive you. I’m sure you’ve heard the quote by Winston Churchill, “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.”2 All great men and women of character faced adversity and used the adversity to leave a lasting and powerful legacy. Anyone can sustain an easy life, but it takes character to finish the race with strength, commitment, and a pure heart before the Lord.
One of my wife’s favorite poems, one she memorized in second grade, comes up often and during seasons of trial. A portion of the poem goes like this:
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit—
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
Success is failure turned inside out
The silver tint in the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It might be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.3
Though I believe there are certain things that are important to quit, such as ungodly relationships, addictions, and sinful lifestyles, there are also things you shouldn’t quit, especially and solely based on the presence of adversity. The time to quit is not during your trials. Don’t quit your job, don’t quit your marriage, don’t quit on your kids, and don’t quit on your pastor just because it is no longer easy.
When my son Josiah was born, Jennette and I knew the call of God was on his life, and so his name was chosen. For obvious reasons I love the story of the lasting and impactful legacy left by Josiah who took the throne at the age of eight. Josiah faced adverse odds, went against popular opinion, and stood for what he knew to be right, despite the adverse consequences. King Josiah took the culture that his forefathers allowed to be infiltrated with rampant secularism and reclaimed the house of the Lord with worship. King Josiah was known to do what was right, despite the popular opinion of his day. (See 2 Kings 22:1–23:30; 2 Chronicles 34:1–35:27.)
Your legacy is not dependant on how old you are, what your family left you as an inheritance, or how many people are against you. Your legacy is determined by your obedience to the voice of God and the choices you make when you face those times when you have to hold onto everything you know and boldly believe that “it’s not over.”