Resolution of Remembrance
In this week's Weekly Word, Aaron wrote about Lamentations 3:21-25 and that hope is a weapon. Shameless plug: If you have not signed up to receive our weekly newsletter you are missing out! You can check out Aaron's Week's Weekly word here in case you missed it. If you're not subscribed, you can do so by clicking the subscribe button at the top of the screen to keep up-to-date with everything we are doing at Made to Marvel Ministries.
So anyway, Lamentations...
Lamentations might have one of my favorite perspective changes in the Bible. Hidden away in the middle of the third chapter is a bomb drop. It's just there, sitting, waiting to be discovered. Jeremiah seemed to have been having a really bad day when he penned Lamentations. He was feeling the heat of the consequences of the choices of Judah and in Chapter 3 everything comes to a head. By verse 16 he's even lamenting that God has broken his teeth with gravel and in verse 18 he says, “My strength and my hope have perished from the Lord.” I think it’s safe to assume that Jeremiah was having a moment but through it came the most epic perspective switch in all of scripture:
“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
-Lamentations 3:21-23 NIV
How did Jeremiah make the radical jump from dead hope to unfailing compassion? What changed? Remembrance! If hope is a weapon then remembrance is the hilt by which we wield it.
This seems a fitting word for the start of a new year, especially the start of this new year. Personally, last year was a year of great growth but great trial. If I focus only on the trials then I can miss the growth, my soul can grow downcast within me just like Jeremiah's did—I can miss the forest for the trees. Remembrance is a choice; it must be guarded and maintained like the weapon that it is.
How do we guard our remembrance you ask? By taking our thoughts captive. We must guard our hearts against the narrative of the enemy. He will pull out all the stops to get you stuck in your past, in loops of unforgiveness, bitterness, jealousy, and shame. Remembrance is a weapon, you choose how it is wielded.
This New Year, go ahead, lose the weight, quit the habit, take the time, and whatever other resolution that you have come up with but above all else remember Him! Remember what He did, all the times that He has come through. Remember His unfailing love, His faithfulness, His new mercies and hinge your hope on that and that alone. Whether your resolutions succeed or fail you can live this year in hope not because of what you are able to accomplish but what God already has.
You, my friend, are victorious! You are more than a conqueror. You are loved. You are known. You are seen. You are precious. You are cared for. You have a hope and a future. And you serve the God of angel armies, the uncreated God, the God able and willing to do exceedingly more than you could ask or imagine. You serve the God that came and the God that stays, the God that walks before you and behind you and beside you.
So when the enemy starts spinning the story about how you blew it again, about how you're never going to get it right. You know the one. The story where you break everything you touch and it would be better if you just stopped trying because at least then you wouldn’t fail. When that story starts playing in your ears don't let him win, don't let it land. Even if you came into agreement with it yesterday you don't have to today because you serve the God of new mercies every morning, not just new mercies in the New Year.
Beloved, go ahead and improve whatever it is that you feel like you need to improve, but not at the cost of the greatest resolution you could make, the resolution of remembrance.
Written by Amanda Strauser