As I pinned on my poppy this November 11th I found myself feeling different about life than on an ordinary day– about those around me, about my country and myself. I was humbled and thankful. Why? Because I was remembering what I knew of history, of what people have risked and sacrificed and given for my peace and freedom. Most ordinary days I don’t remember them much. My mind is occupied elsewhere, with a host of other things, many small and petty but urgent or noisy or convenient. How often I’m so wrapped up in them that I forget the other deeply important and lasting things. I can go long stretches without really noticing but days like Remembrance Day remind me, as we pause to remember.
Remembering Changes Us
Remembering is a powerful activity. Knowledge is only significant if and when we remember it. If we forget it, it loses its influence over us. When I remember the men and women who have fought and died to protect and build the freedoms I enjoy every day my mindset is altered, even for just that moment. My perspective shifts and with it my attitudes and concerns and feelings. This is the power of remembering. I knew all that history even as I was caught up in my daily routines and busyness but I wasn’t truly remembering it. When I do I find that even that simple change of mind can alter not only my thoughts but my priorities and affections as well.
Remembering The Most Important Gospel
As I consider the sacrifices of others for my peace and freedom and life I am reminded of the greatest and most glorious of these. If Remembrance Day is to honour and celebrate the courage and perseverance and love of those who’ve risked and given their lives for us then Christ Jesus, the Son of God, is the very embodiment of this. He gave up more than anyone could ever know for the sake of every man, woman and child. And they weren’t His friends or family or nation. They were His enemies. He suffered and died to save the very souls responsible for His brutal, undeserved death; the very people who deserved that death. But He loved them so greatly He gave up all He had for them.
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:6-8
And He won for us not only a reprieve from death and atonement for our wrongdoing, but He overcame and defeated sin and death itself. He rose from the grave resurrected so that death need never again have the final say. He rose so that in the extraordinary gift He gives we not only escape the sting of guilt and death but we receive His amazing, unbreakable, perfect life forever. He rose so that we can be made free and live with Him, the One who loves us so, for all the ages to come.
Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel
2 Timothy 2:8
Remembering is More Than Knowing
I’ve known these things for most of my life and believed them. I’ve known about Jesus and the news of what He’s done for us and to us. But so often I don’t remember it. I get caught up in other things. I forget to believe in what I know to be true. In fact, I can forget so thoroughly sometimes that I believe other contrary things in the heat of the moment. I can forget and find myself afraid of the sting of death or feeling alone and alienated from God or I can despair under the weight of my own guilt, the very guilt he took for me to the cross to finish forever. Simply not remembering the good news of Jesus restricts my ability to believe in it. Forgetting it directly affects my perspective, my mood, my thoughts, my feelings, my attitudes and my priorities. Just like on Remembrance Day what I remember, what I fix my mind upon, what I dwell on, dictates what I’m actively believing in and therefore my choices and actions.
Be Reminded to Believe
The Gospel, the good news of Jesus, has a very simple message. It tells of all Jesus has done and simply says “Believe!”
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
John 1:12
All that’s left for anyone to both enter into and experience the salvation and life of Jesus is simply to believe in Him as Saviour and Lord. J. D. Greear in his book Gospel says, “Believing in the Gospel is not only the way we become Christians, it is the power that enables us to do, every moment of every day, the very things Jesus commands us to do.” Believing in the Gospel not only informs the Christian life but it also empowers it. And our remembering supplies our belief. To first believe we must know. To continue to believe we must remember.
“The most important daily habit we can possess is to remind ourselves of the Gospel.” – Charles Spurgeon
Be Reminded of Your Help
If remembering the Gospel is so important and yet so difficult to sustain are we lost? Are we hopeless? No, because as always we are not left alone in this. God desires us to remember and believe and live as who we are in Christ. And He supplies us with all we need for this as well. Jesus knew His disciples and all who would follow after them – like you and me – would easily get lost and forget His words on our own. So He sent someone who would be even better for us than if He stayed himself. He sent us a helper.
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
John 14:26
The Holy Spirit of God dwells in every one of us who believes in Jesus. He is in the very heart of us, guiding us and speaking to us. And one of His central purposes is to remind us of the Gospel. So, we don’t despair or lose heart or give up because we are not abandoned or left to our own devices. It is God by His Spirit who works in us, both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil 2:13). And it is God who is completing the good work He’s begun in us (Phil 1:6). And knowing that we can rejoice and not be afraid or discouraged, but breathe and move and work along with Him and through Him with peaceful confidence.
Be Reminded Daily
At St. George’s we’re talking more and more about growing in our “Gospel fluency.” We want to be a people who know and remember and believe the Gospel in every part of us. We want to help each other grow in this. John Webster once wrote, “growth in the Christian life is simply growth in seeing that the gospel is true; that Jesus Christ is the preeminent reality of all things.“
As I look for my life to match more and more who I am as a believer in Jesus and child of God I am reminded today to remember. I’m reminded to let the Holy Spirit usher the true and lasting news of Jesus – His life and death and resurrection and ascension and return – from the recesses to the forefront of my mind and heart; to supply my belief and “let the Spirit renew my thoughts and attitudes” (Eph 4:23 NLT).
The Bible calls the Gospel “the power of God for salvation”(Rom 1:16) and I want to fill every moment and aspect of my life with that salvation and power. I want to become fluent in the language of God’s power for salvation.
So, may we all remember today and always the deep, important, lasting things. May we remember more and more, day and night, through calm and storm, mountaintop and valley low, in worship services and traffic jams, on phone calls and roller-coasters, of all Jesus has done and won for us.
May we remember what we believe, so that we may believe it. May we all never forget.
Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not come under judgment. Indeed, he has crossed over from death to life.
John 5:24
