A Time to Remember.

In September 2006, 39 year old Jeff Denham kissed his fiancé Penny goodbye, hopped in his wrecked Dodge Neon and disappeared. Jeff was a Canadian citizen who had met his fiancé Penny, who lived in Olympia, Washington, online through a gaming site. The only problem was he lived 988 miles away in the remote Slave Lake, Alberta, Canada. He had worked in the sawmill there.

Eventually, phone calls became visits and soon the couple were so in love they couldn’t bear to be apart so Jeff moved to Olympia to be with his soon to be bride, Penny. That fateful, crisp morning in September, Jeff was to travel back across the border to be with his mom and her friend who was dying of cancer.

As he descended the steps, he kissed his wife Penny and told her, “when you miss me I’ll be right here and gently patted her heart.” She knew something was wrong as he pulled out of the driveway, the look in his eye as he left was different, it was one of confusion, of disorientation. He was supposed to call Penny as soon as he arrived, but she waited by the phone in vain for one day, then two and never got a call. Concerned she begin calling his mother in Alberta, she hadn’t seen him.

She knew there was a problem and she had a good idea what it was, Back in 1995, Jeff had disappeared for 9 months after what was called a dissociative fugue. When He was found he had no recollection of the events, and no remembrance of who he was, what he enjoyed, who his relatives were…nothing. He had had a complete mental break.

Now on his way back home, he had vanished again. Frantic to find him, Penny began calling the over 400 hospitals between Olympia and Slave Lake, but couldn’t get any information because they were not legally married.

She tried to fill out a missing person’s report but neither the Canadian or US Police had enough to file a missing person’s report, He could have simply left. Penny knew that wasn’t the case, she knew he was missing, just just couldn’t find him. The thought of him being alone, not knowing where or who he was only fueled her fears. Amnesia is a terribly disheartening and debilitating disease. And yet as terrible as physical amnesia, spiritual amnesia is even worse.

Deuteronomy chapter 8 warns us about the effects of spiritual amnesia and encourages us to remember the Lord our God.

Highlight:

'“Carefully follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase, and may enter and take possession of the land the Lord swore to your fathers. Remember that the Lord your God led you on the entire journey these forty years in the wilderness, so that he might humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you by letting you go hungry; then he gave you manna to eat, which you and your fathers had not known, so that you might learn that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord . Your clothing did not wear out, and your feet did not swell these forty years. Keep in mind that the Lord your God has been disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. So keep the commands of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams, springs, and deep water sources, flowing in both valleys and hills; a land of wheat, barley, vines, figs, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey; a land where you will eat food without shortage, where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and from whose hills you will mine copper. When you eat and are full, you will bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. ' Deuteronomy 8:1-10

Explain:

Moses, the fabled leader of the children of Israelites continues his farewell address as it were to a people who were about to pursue their destiny. The culmination of promise 500 years in the making to their forefather, Abraham, is about to commence as the people are getting set to enter the land of promise. Prior to their entrance, with all the urgency of a dying man who had given his life to this people and this cause, Moses has some words of warning and enlightenment for them as they enter the land.

Two ideas come to light in this portion of Scripture they are remembrance and obedience. Moses begins this section by calling them to follow every command that was given to them. They are to follow them because their ability to enter the land is predicated on their ability to follow instructions. The people are bigger and greater than they are (we learn that in chapter 9) so they will have to have faith in the promises of God if they are to stand against the fear that will come up in them and that faith will be demonstrated by their explicit obedience to the commands of God. This will be a difficult test for them because the fear will arise within them, so Moses reminds them of God’s faithfulness in their life and calls on them to remember Him and specifically how he led them through the wilderness. This was to humble them and make them dependent on Him. If they had entered this land in their pride they would surely have been defeated and flee in fear.

God humbled them and taught them how to trust Him by letting them go hungry and then feeding them so that “you might learn that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (8:3) God did this so that they would learn how dependent they had to be on His word. He also reminds them that He is the One who sustains them (“their clothing did not wear out and their feet did not swell”) (8:4)

This is how the Lord disciplined them, not in a way of punishing them but in a way instructing them, of developing the discipline they would need to be afraid but to trust God ability to provide for them and to sustain them and to go before them. All the lessons of the wilderness would be needed when they entered the promised land. Moses is now reminding them of this. They needed to remember how God could provide for them like He did with the manna, how God could sustain them like He did with their clothes in the desert. They needed to remember how God could fight for them and go before them like He did with the Egyptians. All that they needed to stand against the fear of the enemy bigger than they were in the future was to remind themselves of how their God was bigger than their enemy in the past. God was teaching them to have faith in the future by remembering His faithfulness in the past. Therefore He could be trusted now. He calls on them to have faith, but more specifically to obey the Lord’s commands. This obedience is the proof of their faith. It is the demonstration of it. Embedded within their obedience to God’s law was their faith in God’s promise. They obeyed what God said because they trusted what God said and they trusted what God said because they had already seen what God can do.

Apply:

The same is true in our lives, we obey because we believe, we believe because we remember. If we forget, we won’t believe but walk in fear, and if we don’t believe, we certainly will not obey. They are all connected.

In our lives as believers today, we need to rehearse God’s faithfulness in our ears so we can receive God’s power in our hearts. If we are to follow God’s voice in the future, we have to remember His power in the past. This is precisely why we go through difficulty sometimes. When we go hungry it is to humble us and remind us that God is the One who provides for us. He doesn’t let us go hungry to hurt us but to make us dependent on Him. Teaching us the discipline of dependence is so critical to our obedience. We need to remember the times when God has fed us. When God has taught us dependence. How many times has God provided for us when we had no where else to turn? How many times have we been amazed at God’s provision? How many times have we been amazed at how God has preserved our lives? But to experience this, we had to be hungry first. God had to let us go hungry so He could teach us that He could feed us. This should bring purpose to our pain, knowing that God is teaching us to be dependent on Him in the midst of it. We will never come to know that God is faithful until we experience lack in our lives. So often we run from suffering when suffering is the very vehicle God uses to teach us that He can be what we need most. He teaches us to depend on Him in the crucible of suffering. We will need that lesson down the road. We need to remember that He can be trusted when we can’t see Him because we are living in the shadows fo the giants in the land.

The prescription for the fear of the future must be the remembrance of God’s faithfulness in the past. We have to remember these things, to stir them up in our memory for in so doing we will find the courage to believe. This is what will lead to our obedience. When we believe the demonstration of the faith in our heart is the obedience of our hands. Obedience always follows belief and belief always follows remembering.

Respond:

Jesus thank You for reminding me of Your faithfulness. Thank You for the season in my life where You did indeed feed me. Thank You for reminding me again of how You preserved my life in the desert wilderness, how You sustained me. Thank You for all the lessons You taught me in the wilderness for they have indeed become the foundation of my faith in the midst of the fear of the future. Now Lord please help me to walk in obedience to Your commands and in so doing show my faith in Your leadership in my life. You are the God that goes before, help me to trust You by remembering Your faithfulness and may that trust be shown in how I obey You.

Now for those of you who stayed till the end, here's the rest of the story as Paul Harvey would say.

It was late October that pedestrians began to avoid a street corner in Denver because of the man who would approach them, “please help me, I don’t know who I am, the man would say.” Eventually, the neatly dressed and sharp looking man walked some 6 to 8 miles to a Denver health facility,

He walked into the emergency room and when the attendant asked him his name, all he could do was stare at her with that blank confused stare and respond, I don’t know. The man they called Amnesia Al was whisked to a week of psychiatric testing, DNA testing, blood tests, fingerprinting, nothing could reveal who this man was.

He was then taken to a halfway house with men struggling with mental issues and drug rehab. He joked there was Alcoholic Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, but there was no Anonymous Anonymous. Eventually a police detective involved with Amnesia Al’s case decided to go public a on October 22, the man walked in front of a TV studio camera and said, “I am asking for help to find out who I am.”

Meanwhile in Olympia, Washington almost instantly Penny’s phone rang, it was Jeff’s brother, “He, with tears, exclaimed, JEFF’S ON TV!” Penny made arrangements to travel to Denver that very afternoon.

When she arrived, Jeff had no idea who she was, just that she had picture after picture of he and her together. Now these years later, Jeff still struggles with Amnesia, but Penny’s love is the anchor to his drifting vessel. Her love is the stabilizing and defining force in his life.

In fact to help Jeff remember, Penny and Jeff got matching tattoos that say Penny and Jeff forever.

Friends, we are like Jeff, alone scared, wondering far from home, not remembering who or whose we are, but thanks be to God for the love our bridegroom Jesus Christ who in Isaiah 49:16 said, “Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” He’s permanently tattooed His love for us into HIs hands, and we dare not forget all that He has done for us.