Then I Remembered What the Lord Had Said . . .

PRAYER OF CONSECRATION

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. 

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.

Jesus, we belong to you. 

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. 

Acts 11:15–18 (NIV)

There’s a phrase in today’s text that captures one of the deepest essences of discipleship to Jesus. See if you can find it. No, I’m not talking about, “but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit,” though that certainly also qualifies. Here’s what jumps off the page to me:

Then I remembered what the Lord had said:

I’m sure a lot of people were thinking a lot of things as the Holy Spirit began to be poured out on the Gentiles gathered in the home of Cornelius. Peter was thinking about Jesus. His mind lit up with a vivid remembrance of one of the first things he ever heard Jesus say. 

Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’

So often, we can’t imagine what the Holy Spirit is saying and doing because we can’t remember what Jesus said and did. It’s kind of like how right now the Holy Spirit is reminding us of the time Jesus said this:

“All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, 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. (John 14:25–26)

If my editors would allow it, I would insert the “mind-blown” emoji here. 

Here’s the thing. Notice the nature of the word remember: re—member. The member or the memory has to be there in the first place in order to re-member it. We can’t remember what we never had in our memory in the first place. That’s why we must stick close to our four best New Testament friends: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Following Jesus, first and foremost, means following him through every recorded step of his life in first-century Israel: his preexistence, conception, prenatal life, birth, childhood, baptism, words, deeds, signs, miracles, preaching, teaching, healings, friendships, meetings with all manner of people, practices, habits, mannerisms, gestures, suffering, death, burial, resurrection, post-resurrection signs, words, deeds, teaching, ascension, outpouring of the Spirit, and now Acts via the Holy Spirit through the apostles, and onward through every church plant, apostolic correspondence, sermon, and celestial revelation. 

We mistakenly think because this is in our Bibles that is enough. We have it. It is not even remotely close to being enough. It must come off the pages of our Bibles and into our active memory. I’m not fond of technological metaphors to teach ancient truths, but try this one on for size. We mistakenly treat the Bible like an external hard drive. We carry it like passive memory. The Word of God—all of it and especially the life of Jesus— must become our active memory. It brings to mind the word my son taught me when he was five: rememberize. We learn these things not by memorization (the quick loading of the short-term memory) but by rememberization (the slow loading of the long-term memory). It is not the training of our brains but the immersion of our lives into the life of God. (It’s why a person who suffers from memory loss may not remember who you are but start singing “Amazing Grace” and they will jump right in!) There’s more to say about computers, hard drives, and RAM but you already get the point and can do that math. 

Our aspiration is for these eight words to become constantly activated in our everyday lives. 

Then I remembered what the Lord had said . . . 

And the best time to begin this kind of rememberization work? Yep, twenty years ago. Second best time? Today! The good news . . . you are much further along in this than you realize. It’s time to take it to the next level. 

THE PRAYER OF TRANSFORMATION

Lord Jesus, I am your witness. 

I receive your righteousness and release my sinfulness.
I receive your wholeness and release my brokenness.
I receive your fullness and release my emptiness.
I receive your peace and release my anxiety.
I receive your joy and release my despair.
I receive your healing and release my sickness. 
I receive your love and release my selfishness. 

Come Holy Spirit transform my heart, mind, soul, and strength so that my consecration becomes your demonstration; that our lives become your sanctuary. For the glory of God our Father, amen.

THE QUESTION

Try this thought exercise in your Wake-Up Call Journal today: You are on a desert island with no Bibles. You want to try and write down as much as you can remember about Jesus. What can you remember?  Stories, sayings, signs, etc. etc. On your mark, get set, go! 

THE HYMN

Today we will sing, “Tell Me the Stories of Jesus.” It is hymn 159 in our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise.

For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
Sower-in-Chief
seedbed.com

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