“Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life. And you shall make them known to your children and to your children’s children.”

-Deuteronomy 4:9

I’ll never forget my first visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Built in 1993 in Washington, DC, it is a contrast of brilliant architecture and stark horror that leaves you feeling uncomfortable. Many exhibits here, viewed individually, will leave an indelible mark on your heart. Together, they are nearly unbearable. A room full of 4,000 pairs of shoes belonging to Jews gassed in an extermination camp. Videos made by German doctors recording lethal experiments performed on their Jewish subjects. Details of the how the Nazis used the pseudo-sciences of physiognomy and eugenics[i] to ‘prove’ that Jews, gypsies, the handicapped, homosexuals, and the Polish were less than human—and hence, worthy of forced extinction.

Nations around the world solemnly intoned “Never again” after WWII. Variations of this are etched into stone on Holocaust memorials around the world.

And yet, interestingly, the world is already beginning to forget the Holocaust, and the policies of appeasement and deliberate ignorance that allowed it to happen. We find it so easy to forget. Almost without exception, history shows that we begin to forget atrocities around the world soon after they occur—the Armenian genocide, Stalin, Pol Pot, Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan. The statement “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”[ii] was proved to be grimly accurate.

One of the reasons for this tendency to forget has measurable carryover into our spiritual lives. It is the competing attention of other things.

The bills are due. I have to go to work. I can’t get up that early! I haven’t spent time with the kids this week. I can’t believe they just elected that crazy guy who [insert your favourite political pet peeve here]. I have to catch up with my friends. I have to plan for my retirement. What happens to my family if I lose my job? Where will I be in ten years? What am I doing with my life right now? Why did I [insert past sin here] ten years ago?

Can you relate?

This tendency to forget stunts our growth into Christlikeness. We tend to forget what God has done in the past, and the things He has said to us not because we choose to, but because we choose to focus our attention on other things. It’s not a deliberate choice to forget, it’s a natural consequence of what we choose to spend our time on. The difference is an important one.

This is why in the Old Testament the Lord repeatedly exhorts the Israelites to remember Him and what He has done for them. On one occasion in the giving of the law, God goes so far as to specify that the Israelites should make their clothes a certain way (with blue tassels) in order to remind them to “…remember all the commands of the Lord, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by going after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes (Numbers 15:39).

Does this sound extreme to you? Bear in mind that the ancient Israelites were surrounded by very popular pagan religions competing for their attention, some of which had extremely sensual and ‘in your face’ religious practices—in short, they were an easy distraction to the fledgling Israelite follower of Yahweh.

Our world today is really not very different, is it?

Recognizing our tendency to forget what the Lord has said and done in the past, and taking intentional action to remember will change our lives.

We will be reminded of the utter finality of salvation, and that it does not need to be redone (Heb 5:9). That we cannot earn his love; it is freely given regardless of what we do. Of gifts and passions he has placed in us that we have not pursued because of other ‘urgent’ pursuits. That we are not a slave to the sins of our past, and that life as a Christ-follower is about more than ‘sin management’. That he has called us to follow him, and wants us to experience the easy grace of following him, instead of struggling along following our own lead (Matt 11:30).

How are we to do this? Jesus taught that the vehicle for this is the Holy Spirit (John 14:26)—“But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”

If God has provided the Holy Spirit to teach and to remind us—how are we to work in concert with what the Holy Spirit is already doing? A very practical way to help us to remember what the Lord has taught and said to us is to write it down. Keeping a journal or a record of the gentle leadings of the Lord in your devotionals and throughout your day is a powerful tool. Reviewing this from time to time, perhaps monthly or quarterly is a tool in your toolkit to ‘train yourself in Godliness’ (1 Tim 4:7).

Quiet meditation on what God has said or done in the past allows me to see that my struggle is not so much in learning to hear His voice, it is in obediently taking action on what He says, or taking action on what I already know. Through reflection on my journal, I realize that often I am asking God in prayer for answers he has already provided in the past. I’m re-treading already trodden ground.

The memorization of Scripture is another tool to help us remember what God has said. As you memorize certain passages, you will be astonished at how the Holy Spirit brings them to mind throughout the day in conversations, evangelism, and everyday decisions.

A writer[iii] once said “Man’s first faculty is forgetting”, and he was right. Let this not be true of followers of Jesus, and let us be grateful for the gift of the Holy Spirit, who teaches and reminds us of the unchanging nature and character of God as we take action to “remember the Lord our God” (Deut 8:18).

For further reading: Num 15:39, Heb 5:9, Matt 11:30, John 14:26, Deut 8:18

For action: Have a read through some of these scriptures. Spend some time in quiet meditation this week on what the Lord has said to you in the last year, and what action you have taken on it. If you struggle to remember, sit down with a pad and pen and thank the Lord that he provides his Holy Spirit to teach and remind you, and ask him to do so right now. Make notes on what He brings to mind. Resolve to keep track of what God says in a journal this upcoming year, and to review it from time to time to see if the action you’ve taken has borne fruit in your life.

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[i] For a sobering read on how popular eugenics (a philosophy that advocates the ‘improvement’ of human beings through various forms of intervention) was in the 19th and 20th centuries—and how many influential people advocated it, do a search on ‘eugenics’ on Wikipedia, or Encarta. Proponents of eugenics advocated various forms of ‘human improvement’ include forced sterilization of people with genetic defects, the killing of the institutionalized, and, in the case of the Nazis, genocide of races they deemed to be inferior. You will be shocked to find how popular this philosophy was in the U.S. and Europe prior to WWII (and who it was advocated by)—it was distinctly NOT an invention of the Nazis. They merely carried out some of the worst of its logical conclusions.
[ii]This saying originated from the writings of George Santayana, a Spanish-American author of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His point was that studying history is necessary, even essential, to avoid repeating past mistakes. They were made popular when William L. Shirer made them the epigraph for his famous Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959).

[iii] This was said by Albert Camus, the French existentialist, and author of The Plague.