Duet. 4:9 Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.
Deut 6:5-9 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.
My husband and I host a small group bible study at our house on Monday nights. Tonight, we did a study on how we should remember the things that God has done in the past to help us move on to the future. Why is it that we need to remember these things that God has done? It can be summed up in just a few words. It gives us hope, it shows us God's unchanging character and faithfullness, and above all else, it displays God deep, never ending love for His children whom He will not forsake.
So often we read of the the "great" bible stories...such as Daniel in the Lions Den, The Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, David and Goliath, God parting the Red Sea and consuming the enemies....we hear these familiar stories in songs, poems, inspirational writings. Why? Is it just another meaningless Sunday school lesson? No. It is much much more. It is a deep longing in the soul of man to know that the same God....the God of Daniel, the God of the Hebrew children, The God of David, the God of Moses, is our God. He is real, and He is the same today as He was 5000 year ago. If God never changes, then why don't we see these things in our lives?
The only other option is to look within ourselves. We must trust in God with all our heart, all our mind and all our souls...and lean not on OUR own understanding. That is often where we mess up. We try to do it ourselves...and then wonder what in the heck God is doing.
Give it to Him. Give it to God and watch Him deliver you from the giant, the fiery furnace, the Red Sea, and the mouths of the lions. He can and will.....He desires to bless us beyond what we could ever imagine....if we will just let Him.
Application: Keep a journal. Write down your struggles....and later, how God intervened. Write down how God has helped, loved, corrected, provided, protected you. No matter how small. Go back week after week and read it until the day you die. Then leave it for your children so they can read it and be strengthened.
You will be strengthened. You will have renewed hope.
Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans that I have for you", declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future".
Wow.
Just think about that.
