Never Forget: The Practice of Reflection & Remembrance

Psalm 103 (RESPONSIVE READING)

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

and all that is within me,

bless his holy name!

2 Bless the Lord, O my soul,

and forget not all his benefits,

3 who forgives all your iniquity,

who heals all your diseases,

4 who redeems your life from the pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

5 who satisfies you with good

so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

6 The Lord works righteousness

and justice for all who are oppressed.

7 He made known his ways to Moses,

his acts to the people of Israel.

8 The Lord is merciful and gracious,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

9 He will not always chide,

nor will he keep his anger forever.

10 He does not deal with us according to our sins,

nor repay us according to our iniquities.

11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,

so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;

12 as far as the east is from the west,

so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

13 As a father shows compassion to his children,

so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

14 For he knows our frame;

he remembers that we are dust.

15 As for man, his days are like grass;

he flourishes like a flower of the field;

16 for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,

and its place knows it no more.

17 But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,

and his righteousness to children’s children,

18 to those who keep his covenant

and remember to do his commandments.

19 The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,

and his kingdom rules over all.

20 Bless the Lord, O you his angels,

you mighty ones who do his word,

obeying the voice of his word!

21 Bless the Lord, all his hosts,

his ministers, who do his will!

22 Bless the Lord, all his works,

in all places of his dominion.

Bless the Lord, O my soul!

Recency Bias

We live in a world ruled by the tyranny of “right now.”

Whatever just happened feels like the biggest thing that has ever happened.

Whatever trend is trending feels like the future.

Whatever crisis is current feels permanent.

We are wired to overvalue what just happened and undervalue what has always been true.

Psychologist call it “recency bias”

We judge history by today.

We assume we’re the most enlightened generation.

We assume our problems are unprecedented.

Society is prone to recency bias because the human soul is prone to forgetfulness.

My 4-year-old is a good example of this.

“I NEVER got to watch Spider-Man!”

Which means: I didn’t get to finish it.

The soul does the same thing.

“God never came through.”

“God never answered.”

“God never helped.”

But what we mean is:

He didn’t do it the way I wanted Him to do it.

He didn’t do it whenI wanted Him to do it.

If I allow my soul to forget what God has done, then I will misinterpret what God is doing.

In Psalm 103, David is preaching to his own soul.

He is intentionally reminding himself of the past faithfulness of God.

The will is preaching to the inner life.

The mind is commanding the emotions.

The covenant memory is correcting the present moment.

David is practicing the rhythms we want to discuss today: Reflection and Remembrance

Reflection and remembrance are not automatic.

They must be intentionally practiced.

Our goal today is to stand next to David the psalmist and learn from him to practice Reflection and Remembrance.

Sermon Title: Never Forget: The Practice of Reflection and Remembrance

Review a few things that David models for us as he is preaching to his own soul.

We will see that these are some of the same things we want to remember.

PRAYER

Remember God’s Goodness (v.2–5)

“Bless the Lord, o my soul and forget not all his benefits…”

David does not say: remember your performance.

He says, “remember His benefits”.

Then he lists them:

Forgives all your iniquity

Heals all your diseases

Redeems your life from the pit

Crowns you with steadfast love and mercy

Satisfies you with good so your youth is renewed

This is personal language.

Not abstract.

Not national.

Not cosmic.

Personal.

Exhortation:

Beloved, do not reduce your life to your latest disappointment.

You have a history with God and it is not all bad.

“He woke me up this morning and started me on my way”

Remember God’s Justice (v.6)

“The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.”

This is not simply personal goodness. This is covenant justice.

It is the justice modeled in God’s deliverance of Israel out of bondage in Egypt.

It is the Exodus story.

It is the reality of God.

God is not neutral on issues of injustice.

We serve a God who will get involved in the affairs of humankind.

And He always gets in on the side of the oppressed, the forgotten, and the disinherited.

Exhortation:

If you forget that God is just, you will assume injustice has the final word.

In times like these, it is easy to sink into the overwhelming darkness of despair

But remembrance fuels perseverance.

Justice may not be immediate, but it is anchored in the character of God.

MLK said it well, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but bends toward justice.”

Remember God’s Mercy (v.8–12)

“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

This phrase is how God introduces Himself to Moses.

He does not deal with us according to our sins.

In fact, He deals with our sin so that He can deal with us in love.

He removes transgression “as far as the east is from the west.”

As promised, we performed the symbolic act of burning the confessions of sin that we carried to the Lord last Sunday.

(PLAY VIDEO)

Exhortation:

Beloved, do not keep rehearsing sins God has already burned up and forgotten.

If you forget mercy, you will either drown in guilt or harden into self-righteousness.

Remember God’s Mercy.

Remember God’s Faithfulness (v.17–18)

“The steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting…”

From everlasting. To everlasting.

To children’s children.

This is generational covenant language.

You cannot get an accurate view of God inside of one lifetime

Your life is not an isolated episode.

You are living inside of a much longer story.

The Simpsons is the longest running primetime TV series in US history (803 episodes)

You can’t watch just one scene from one episode and think you’re an expert on the show.

Exhortation:

If you forget faithfulness across generations, you will interpret every season as final.

But you are not living a moment. You are living inside a cosmic covenant narrative.

There are storylines that started with your great great grandparents that God is picking up in your life.

And there are seeds that you are sowing that will bear fruit in your children’s lives.

My father prayed a prayer for me one of the last times I saw him verbal and conscious that God would give me in ministry what he missed in his life.

Remember God’s Power & Authority (v.19-22)

“The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all…Bless the Lord, O you His angels… His hosts… you ministers who do His will…”

These verses reset anxiety.

He reigns…AND YES THAT MEANS You are not sovereign.

But it also means

Your circumstances are not sovereign.

The headlines are not sovereign.

He is working everything according to the counsel of His own will and He is working it together for your good!

Exhortation:

If you forget who is on the throne, you will try to take the throne.

And that is exhausting.

The enemy wants us to feel that the world is out of control.

We have to remind ourselves that God is still on the throne and nothing has gone wrong in heaven.

“If you do not command your soul to remember, your circumstances will cause it to forget.”

And you will begin to misinterpret what God is doing in your life.

You will begin to misinterpret what God is doing in this world.

How are you interpreting your life today, beloved?

If you only interpret your life by today’s difficulty, it feels tragic.

If you interpret your life in light of God’s past faithfulness, it becomes testimony.

That’s why it is so impactful for the psalmist to say “Bless the Lord, oh my soul”!

David is commanding his innermost being to BLESS the Lord.

Hebrew word “Barak”

To kneel in submission

To invoke favor

To acknowledge and align

Bless does not mean to hype God up

Bless is not a church activity, it is a heart posture

Praise is the interpretation of our life through the lens of remembrance.

The story of my life is the story of His goodness and faithfulness.

And it brings your life in alignment…

the place of God’s blessing

You submit to God

You invoke God’s favor

It’s like a physical therapist.

Someone injures their back.

They go to physical therapy.

The therapist stretches it, pushes it, makes them do movements that hurt.

What the therapist is doing really and truly hurts.

The patient says: “This is making it worse.”

But the therapist says: “This pain is restoring what was damaged.”

You’re going off of what you feel in your body right now.

I’ve been to school for this.

And you are not my first patient.

Sometimes God’s present activity feels like harm, but we cannot allow our soul to forget the larger context of His past faithfulness.

A Word On How To Practice Reflection and Remembrance

Count Your Blessings

Thank God every day for one week for something you’ve never thanked Him for.

You’ll be surprised.

Read Christian Biographies

One per quarter

Two a year

Look at God’s faithfulness in the lives of saints who lived before us.

Share Your Own Story

Remind yourself

Provide fresh perspective for someone else

Comfort others with the same comfort wherewith you have been comforted (2 Cor. 1:4)

Don’t let your circumstances preach louder in your life than your history with God.

Ambassador Church—

Do not let this week preach louder than your history with God.

Do not let today’s frustration erase yesterday’s faithfulness.

You have been forgiven.

You have been carried.

You have been redeemed.

You have been crowned with steadfast love.

You are not standing here by accident.

You did not survive by luck.

You have not held together by your own strength.

The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all.

So let’s speak to our souls right now (REPEAT AFTER ME):

“Soul, Bless the Lord!

When you wake up tomorrow:

Bless the Lord!

When the headlines try to shake you:

Bless the Lord!

When something goes wrong:

Bless the Lord!

Allow the memory of what God has done in the past to steady you.

Allow the testimony of others to encourage you.

Remember that You are not living a tragedy. You are living a testimony.

So bless the Lord, O my soul—

and never, never, never, forget

The goodness and the mercy of God.”