Ever AfterSample

Don’t Forget to Remember 

The day after vacation is always a bummer. Post-vacation blues are a real thing. Your trip is over, and all you’re left with are the memories (and maybe a souvenir or a new t-shirt if you’re lucky). 

Coming down from a mountaintop moment with God can feel the same way, if we’re honest. When you’ve had a life-changing experience, it can be difficult to transition back into a routine that hasn’t actually changed at all. 

Whether you’re coming out of quarantine, camp, or a conference, chances are you feel like you’re standing in a different place than where you started. Maybe your encounter with God was a fresh start, or perhaps it left you standing at a crucial crossroads. Either way, what you do next is very important. 

If you caught our last devotional (it’s titled YTHX2020), you already read about God miraculously parting the Jordan River so His people could safely walk through it in order to reach their Promised Land (you can catch that entire story in Joshua 3 if you missed it). You may think after witnessing such an incredible miracle, the people were hyped up and ready to take on the enemies that still stood in their way, but in Joshua 4, we read what actually went down. 

Before the people began conquering the land, God instructed them to gather 12 stones from the Jordan River and build a memorial, which would serve as a constant reminder of the day they saw God move on their behalf. They weren’t supposed to plunge immediately back into normal life or move directly ahead into battle — they were to pause and remember. Remember God’s faithfulness. Remember what God taught them. Remember Who made a way in the wilderness. 

And if you’re coming down from a mountaintop experience with the Lord, that’s what you need to do too. Pause and remember. Set up your own memorial. Maybe you don’t get stones from a river, but you write down your experience in a journal. Or maybe you print what God taught you and hang it on a wall in your room. Maybe you document it on IG for your friends to see.

God told Joshua to set up the memorial “so that all the people might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful.” Your memorial isn’t just for you. It’s for those watching too. It’s so you can remember God’s past faithfulness when you approach that obstacle that’s waiting in your future, but it’s also so you can tell the next generation what you saw God do. 

Part of what makes any “happily ever after” so happy is remembering what you were rescued from. 

Don’t forget to remember what God’s done.