Memory - A Powerful Tool

Lamentations 3:19–26 ESV

Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

Remembering the bad times.

These are the easiest to remember. They evoke the strongest emotions.

According to Elizabeth Kensinger of Boston College. "When it seems like when we're having an emotional reaction, the emotional circuitry in the brain kind of turns on and enhances the processing.”

Jeremiah is living through the destruction of Israel.

Lamentations 2:11 ESV

My eyes are spent with weeping; my stomach churns; my bile is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infants and babies faint in the streets of the city.

Some of us have been in places where we have seen the devastation of war. The heartbreak. This is what Jeremiah is going through. It does not have to be war to have these strong feelings. When things are so bad, it pushes us into a depression. Sometimes we have memory gaps.

Studies show that people who have significant memory gaps apart from a brain trauma, is because we experience something so traumatic that it is not encoded correctly. Or our brain is on survival mode and there no way to encode the memory or the memory is just hidden.

Just because we have bad memories, does not mean we should just ignore it. Bad experiences are a fact life because we live in a world filled with sin.

Remember the mercies of God.

When we remember the mercies of God, we are reminded that this world is not our home. We are passing through. It is always the darkest before the dawn. Remembering the mercies of God is our anchor during the bad times. No one wants to experience bad times, but they still happen. Being a Christian does not make you exempt. But the relationship we develop with Jesus Christ will keep us afloat during the bad times. One way is to make a marker in your life for the times when you experienced the mercies of God.

Joshua 4:9 ESV

And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the covenant had stood; and they are there to this day.

One of the greatest ways is to sit down and actually write your testimony. This is just the evidence and your own witness of the mercies of God in your life. This is powerful. It gives you something to remember and hold on to during the hard times.

Revelation 12:11 ESV

And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.

Hope and Wait

This is probably the hardest one. It takes a lot of faith to have hope during a difficult time.

Hebrews 11:1 ESV

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

It does not say it is easy, but it is possible. This just does not happen overnight. It is a process to get to the point of being able to hope and wait. Once again, God gives us the answer and how we can achieve this.

Romans 10:17 ESV

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Reading the word is wonderful, but reading out loud is even better. There is something about how God designed us that when we use two senses at the same time, we really retain more information (science). I am a k/t kines-tic tactile learner myself. I retain so much more information if I read or hear and actually do it at the same time.

In Morgan Spurlock’s “Super Size Me”, the filmmaker asks a group of tourists to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, while standing in front of the White House. The group of tourists struggle with reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in unison. When he asks the group about the ingredients of a Big Mac, they had no problem. Why? When we learn the Pledge of Allegiance, it may use up to 2 senses, sight and sound. Commercials for the Big Mac have a catchy jingle. All with visual and auditory sounds. There is also the smell of a Big Mac. These sensations relate to concrete items we relate to on a daily basis.

Consider for a moment how the brain processes information. (get a picture of neural pathways) Pathways are developed as we learn new information and reinforced with experience. It is estimated that newborns have 2,500 synapses and 3-year olds have 15,000. As we grow older, a process called synaptic pruning begins. This is the process of reinforcing and strengthen pathways based on experience. Less experience based pathways are pruned.

This is why we must utilize as many senses as possible in our children to memorize and apply the Word of God while they have so many synapses just eager to create new pathways. It will make a big difference in their lives.

Psalm 119:105 ESV

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Conclusion:

A - Acknowledge

Romans 3:23 ESV

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

B - Believe

Acts 16:31 (ESV)

And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”

C - Confess

Romans 10:9–10 ESV

because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.