Worship

Scripture

It’s surprising how as humans we have a selective memory that will choose to forget this, but not that. Causing a similar effect to short-term memory loss. One of the hardest questions I get asked is: “What did you eat yesterday?” I twist my head and look back with my eyes as I struggle to figure out what I had to eat the day before. The same thing happens when we lose our phones or the remote control.

In the Scriptures we read today, we are confronted by short-term memory loss when it comes to the things of God. We forget the miracles He graciously performed in our lives. We see the Egyptian king suddenly realizing what they had lost, the Israelite slaves, but completely disregarding the plagues that his people had to go through. 

14.5 When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about them and said, “What have we done? We have let the Israelites go and have lost their services!”

Then we encounter the people of God in an emotional crisis because Pharoah was pursuing them, and even asserting that they were better off as slaves. 

14.11 They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” 

16.3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

On an anthropological level, we could call this short-term memory loss for the things of God. On a spiritual level, it is our constant battle with the things of the flesh versus the things of the Spirit. It was the food, the pleasures, the comfort, etc. that fought against the faith. I believe a long-lost personal practice that we see time and time again in the Bible is that of building an altar of remembrance. Let’s take a moment and slow down from our fast-paced world to remember the testimonies of what God has done! 

Prayer

HONOR GOD

Psalm147:5

How great is our God! There’s absolutely nothing His power cannot accomplish, and He has infinite understanding of everything. 

Thank you Lord, that I don’t have to understand every aspect of my situations. You understand it all when I do not, and are able to do what I can not.

ASK GOD

2 Samuel 22:7

I called to the Lord in my distress; i called to my God. From His temple He heard my voice, and my cry for help reached his ears. 

God is listening and hears every desperate cry.

SUBMIT TO GOD

Proverbs 3:5‭-‬6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight. 

 I relinquish all control to you Lord. Your path for my life will always be better than anything that I could do on my own.

CLOSING PRAYER

Lord, thank you for your abundant, abounding grace. Thank you that we don’t have to earn a drop of the mighty river of grace that flows freely for us today. Thank you for the unexpected, unmerited favor you’ve showered on my life. Help me put myself in the path of your love and grace. Help me not neglect the disciplines I need to meet with you regularly and to drink from the water of life. Thank you for your rich love.  In Jesus Name, Amen.