Testimonies

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A friend once commented that my ability to recall fine details was serving as a curse in my life rather than a blessing. I disagreed immediately and deflected his claim as being way off-target. But these days, some forty years later, I’m beginning to see what he was getting at by that comment. Having a sound mind, I learned recently, is partly being able to retain and catalogue facts. But what is crucial is WHO decides what facts are to be so retained and how it is decided! A keen memory can be a weapon or a tool in the hands of our spiritual adversary if we allow him to dictate what and who and how,  and through what lens we remember. By the same token when an accurate memory is channeled and harnessed for God’s purposes of edification it can pull down strongholds and build up believers left and right all week long. A memory is a little like modern day media; it is either an inspiration or an impediment depending upon how it’s used and applied.
We must be prepared for the eventuality that the gift of a powerful memory on the part of a believer will sooner or later become a target for temptation. The enemy knows better than we do its potential for blessing and good in God’s Kingdom and will attempt to hijack it for his own destructive and malicious use against the very one who possesses it and against those within his or her sphere of influence. Remember, for example, how Moses was instructed in Number chapter 21 to raise up the bronze serpent in the wilderness to save lives and provide healing. Yet that very serpent was later used as an object of worship when God’s people burned incense to it, addressing it as “Nehushtan” or “bronze thing.” The very memory of how Moses used it once for blessing became a curse to the people generations later and an interference with true worship. Thank God Hezekiah recognized this idolatry and had the courage to confront it in his reform and break the relic into pieces. (2 Kings 18, v1-4) When we mull over events or experiences in the past better left forgotten or un-emphasized, we are “burning incense” to those things and blocking God from bringing to the forefront of our minds what needs to be there in this season of our lives.
Let those of us who have been blessed with a good memory pray together now in Jesus’ name that those gifted memories be surrendered and rededicated anew under the blood of His consummate sacrifice at Calvary, and used exclusively for God’s purposes in the ways that God always intended they be used!  Amen.

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