Faith, Not Memories

It's a theme to which I return on a regular basis. Faith is something that is alive and active and not something we live via memories. A lot of times that is hard and I dare say that this will describe most of us, it describes me now and then.

I sit down in my room and I try to remember a more "radical" time in my life. Everything was new, everyone was new. I have a very vivid imagination and a pretty good memory. Put that together and you get a guy that has little problem reliving any memory he wants to. Not a terrible thing, but keep reading.

Yesterday I was thinking about more things to deal with and remove and all this on my adventure into minimalism and I ran aground a small snag: another item with sentimental value. Here's what I wrote:

That livejournal account I have is the last decade of my life history. The writing drops off after 2005 or so, but I have things that I thought and felt and discovered during the first few months of my journey into life with Jesus on that blog. I have conversations I listed. Special things -- some flat-out miraculous -- that happened during that time.

I don't need those things to remember those events or how they feel. Besides, something that God taught me a long time ago is that faith is to be lived and not just remembered. Mind you, we need to recall things that God has done for us or for others , but that is for gathering the strength to do things in the here and now.

My faith is important to me and ten years of history in that will be lost. At the same time, I wonder if that matters. Those are lessons that are carved into me. Will I forget them? No, but I'll lose the purity of expression from that time.

Some of this is just good, solid truth. I did experience some crazy things during the earlier parts of my christian life. I still do now and then. I think it's normative to have things that are out of the ordinary and supernatural happen to you when you're serving a supernatural God. Those things are etched into my memories. So are the people they happened with and where we were.

Some of where we were was location, but a lot of it was just where we were as people. The problem lies in this statement: I'm not who I was then. I'm not and I can't be because I don't have a time machine. I believe that God wants us to progress and remember, but not relive.

There's plenty of biblical precedent to remember things. It's mentioned 140+ times.

I have told you this, so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you. I did not tell you this at first because I was with you.

-- John 16:14

Do you still not understand? Don't you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered?

-- Matthew 16:9

Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don't you remember?

-- Mark 8:18

Remember, remember, remember. Consider, consider, consider. It's everywhere in this book and all of it is used as a stepping stone to live more committed, passionate lives and become bolder people of faith...

...and this is where we find a small problem. Sometimes life and faith have these quiet places. Quiet places where we don't know where to go or what to do. In those times, we remember and reflect and make the dangerous step of making those memories our lives for a while. Sometimes a short while, sometimes our whole lives. A memory of this, a memory of that.

We remember the last time God moved because we haven't seen Him bustling about in a while. We remember the last time we prayed and felt something so powerful because it hasn't happened in a while. We remember, remember, remember and we turn it into an idol.

Ouch.

Repeat: we turn it into an idol. By that I mean we take something that gives us faith and strength to obey God and follow His instructions and we make it the thing we obey. We become afraid to try new things. We start seeking feelings from the past instead of footsteps that move to the future. We ask God to make us who we were instead of who He wants us to become...

...and that's His goal. Transformation by progress and not regress. We dip, dodge, loop, come back to this step and that and then launch forward. We mess up, pause, and come back to the game a little fresher. Even in our worst failings, I believe that God sees us moving forward. Something like, "You have made your way around this hill country long enough; now turn north." (Deut. 2:3)

Then we don't want to. Some of those experiences were pretty cool. We are an experience-driven generation. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, iPhones, iPods, iPads, etc. I'm a tech, so I know. As Christians, we are always told that we should experience God everyday and when you don't know what to look for or where to find Him, you look in the last place He was. I know people that have turned their whole lives upside-down trying to regress just to get back to the last place they experienced God.

We can't do that.

Cannot.

Do.

That....

...and expect to live a passionate, meaningful, impactful life.

That's what we want, right?

Right?

Right.

So what do we do? Read this letter to Timothy.

Timothy? Who is he?

Some young guy in a church who's young and being made to move into a place of leadership. Nervous stuff. He's pretty young to be a leader. That's how he feels and in that society, he's barely a man. He doesn't know what to do or how to move forward or even if he can...

That last sentence sounds a lot like us, doesn't it? Well, this is what Paul says to this young man:

I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.

-- 2 Timothy 1:5-7

In short, I remember what God did you in your family and I'm sure the good things He did then are still alive in you, so take that stuff, think about it, let it fuel your passion and resolve. Move forward without fear because with God, there's nothing to be afraid of. Go pwn life and this mission God gave you.

That's me. That's you. Those memories you're living through are only supposed to be used as fuel to move you into the future. This isn't a frame of reference for all of life, just a mile-marker for God's faithfulness. I'm sure it seems like I'm rehashing the same info and I am because I'm convinced that if you miss this message you will be paralyzed and stuck in a life that kills your soul and I'll not have that.

Now, go ye and pwn.