Remembering
I don’t think I’m the only one who sometimes wishes the sky would open and God would reveal himself in undeniable glory and, of course , I want him to be sure to do this in unconditional love for me and mine! Sometimes I just want to see him working in the same powerful ways we read about in Exodus or Acts. Connie recently sent me a little section from Bruce Waltke’s Old Testament Theology (page 504) in which he reminds us that even in the days of Scripture most people had to experience God not through seeing the miraculous themselves but by remembering what God had done in earlier days.
The founding generation uniquely experienced the events that gave birth to Israel as a nation (Deut 5:3-4). I AM destroyed the land of Egypt by mighty plagues and drowned Pharah’s elite army in the Red Sea. He miraculously protected and provided for Israel in the wilderness; and he spoke to them from Mount Sinai. Their children, however, do not see these events (11:5), and must not expect God to repeat them (30:11-14). Rather, God speaks to future generations through their periodic reading of the covenant (17:18, 27:3, 31:9-13, 26) without adding or subtracting from it (4:2; 12:32). Israel perceives God’s presence principally with their ears, not with their eyes. Memory becomes the divine instrument for maintaining the continuity of Israel and for upholding the divine welfare of those within it. Memory actualizes the word. Brevard Childs says, “The act of remembering serves to actualize the past for a generation removed in time from those former events in order that they themselves can have an intimate encounter with the great acts of redemption. Remembrance equals participation.
God can still do great things and I still long to see him reveal himself in and through us in powerful ways. At the same time I want to be content to live by faith and not by sight. If faith means remembering and holding onto God’s Word in Scripture and believing when we see little that we can authentically call miraculous, so be it. But I’m still going to pray for miracles while I remember the great things God has already done in the gospel and continues to do in our lives by His Holy Sprit. The incarnation of God in Jesus, His life, death and resurrection is the great miracle.
Every time we take the Lord Supper we are reminded of the importance of remembering not just then but every day. I love the Brevard Childs quote above, “The act of remembering serves to actualize the past for a generation removed in time from those former events in order that they themselves can have an intimate encounter with the great acts of redemption. Remembrance equals participation.”
Larry is the senior pastor at 
Larry, I have often asked God for a sign, a healing, a word of encouragment…..Silence. The miricale is that I am asking God for anything after he has given me so much. I still want the unexpected experiance, I still look for Starfish (You will get it).
It is good to remember why our faith is called a faith. I have found more often than not that I grow more in the periods of life where God is not doing what I would call the miraculous. While I certainly long for God to reveal himself in incredible ways to me, I am often amazed that I am able to believe and trust HIm when He does not. To me, this is a miracle to which only Christ can be given the credit.
I have come to appreciate the faith God has given me by his grace so much more at this point in my life, inasmuch as I understand who is the sole object of my faith–the one who substituted himself for me on the Cross.
The recent emphasis on the Upper Room discourse in June and the dramatic teaching of our Lord on what Communion represents for me personally, and for us as a church, a Body of believers is, indeed, all about remembering. The Lord’s Supper only enhances my gratitude for Christ’s gracious offer of participation in him, and with him, all those with whom I am eternally wedded because of their belief in him as well. I feel that Communion in the past few years has, indeed, taken on a much deeper significance for me, understanding who God is, who I am and who I am not, and who we are together as a body in Christ. Communion should, indeed, cause us to remember who we are, owing to Christ’s self-sacrifice for us, and, likewise, tie us back in remembrance of all those who have taken his name such as the disciples in that Upper Room in Jerusalem.
John Stott in his classic, “The Cross of Christ,” captures the reality of individual relationship with Christ and our being a family so poignantly when he writes concerning our need to appropriate his death personally. It’s about remembering via the outward sign of Communion what was done for us and thus who we are who believe in him. I would like to share it. Stott writes, “If we are right in saying that in the upper room Jesus was giving an advance dramatization of his death, it is important to observe what form the drama took. It do not consist of one actor on the stage with a dozen in the audience. No, it involved them as well as him, so that they took part in it as well as he. True, he took, blessed and broke the bread, but then he explained its significance as he gave it to them to eat. Again he took and blessed the cup, but then he explained its meaning as he gave it to them to drink. Thus they were not just spectators of this drama of the cross; they were participants in it. They can hardly have failed to get the message. Just as it was not enough for the bread to be broken and the wine to be poured out, but they had to eat and drink, so it was not enough for him to die, but they had to appropriate the benefits of his death personally. The eating and drinking were, and still are, a vivid acted parable of receiving Christ as our crucified Savior and of feeding on him in our hearts by faith.