Remember the Lord – Part – 1

God created everyone with the ability to remember things. Success, victory, faith, steadfastness or otherwise depends on one’s ability or failure to remember. Regardless of age, gender, social or marital status, the ability to remember has present, continual and eternal importance. The failure of some intelligent students in examinations is due to forgetfulness of salient things. Increasing cases of broken homes are traceable to forgetfulness of marriage vows. People who regularly attend church services, but are not converted and believers who fall into temptations often forget God’s word they had heard or read.

Ineffectiveness in ministry results from inability to recall biblical principles learnt from different leadership forums, while people fail to receive needed miracles during gospel revivals for forgetting God’s promises they ought to claim by faith. Even in secular endeavours, many people fail woefully because they keep forgetting to apply the principles of success they learnt to real life situations. Those who are not as strong and knowledgeable as others, but have ability to remember and apply scriptural principles in taking decisions at critical times succeed in life.

The secret of divine touch and transformation lies in one’s ability to remember and apply scriptural principles. The rich man prayed in hell, but was told to remember he lived without God. To avoid recalling and being haunted throughout eternity by thoughts of a missed opportunity to repent and live by His word, we are called to “remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth…” and to “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth”. To be saved, redeemed and healed, we must remember the Lord as our Saviour, Redeemer, Healer, Deliverer and Defender, and His promises on salvation, redemption, healing, deliverance and protection to claim in prayer.

To read the Bible during the day and run to shrines of agents of Satan in the night for protection is proof of forgetting Jesus as our Lord and Master, the Controller of our lives and Revealer of pitfalls and right paths to follow. Since Christ is our Sanctifier, Refiner and Purifier, it is unwise, dangerous and disadvantageous to retain the Adamic nature, while we continue to hear, read, sing and preach His word. While there is internal, external and eternal disadvantages of forgetting His word, promise, power, wonders, warnings, love and faithfulness, remembering them is the secret of success, victory, spiritual restoration, renewal and refreshment.

God is faithful; He fulfills His promises, when we claim them in prayer. In view of His willingness to fulfill His promise, the Scripture calls us to “remember… and be holy unto [our] God”. To be holy, we must remember He demands and accomplishes it by the power in Christ’s blood. He means whatever He says, and says whatever He will do. “God is not a man, that he should lie… hath he said, and shall he not do it?” Being faithful, He can and will fulfil His promises of a better, richer, higher, deeper and bigger life we claim through prayer.

But this requires that we do not separate prayer from preaching or prioritise prayer above the word of God. Prayers that receive divine intervention are based on God’s word and promises. Rather than think of Satan’s activities and confess the possibility of being affected by them, believers need to always recall God’s promises on protection, preservation, provision and divine presence. Saved, sanctified and set apart for God’s holy use, believers are privileged to sit with Christ in heavenly places. As such, they do not degrade themselves by mingling with the ungodly, but remember to keep God’s word at home and at work, knowing that “the faithful God… keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations”.

We must not remember the things that hurt, disturb, detract, weaken and distress, but those that heal and establish us.
Further Reading (King James Version): Deuteronomy 8:18; Psalm 63:6; 12:1; Numbers 15:40,41; 23:19,20; Deuteronomy 7:6,9; Psalms 89:34; 119:89; Matthew 24:35; Psalms 50:16-22; 19:17; Psalm 22:27; 103:1-3; 105:5; 2 Timothy 2:7,8.