Remember Why


Prayer: Dear Lord God, may I learn how to praise You in every circumstance. May I learn how to praise You on the spur of the moment and in every situation. No matter what is going on, You are worthy of praise. Please teach me how to remember all that You have done for me and to praise You for all of it, for You alone are worthy to receive such honor. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Read: Luke 1:67-79
http://www.esvbible.org/search/Luke+1%3A67-79/

Thoughts: Remembering goes both ways when it comes to our relationship with God. We ask Him to remember mercy and forgiveness (and to forget our sins) and He wants us to remember all that He has done for us to sustain our lives and save us for eternity. Zechariah’s prayer of praise points to just exactly how and why we are to         remember our God:

74  that we, being delivered from the hand of   
     our enemies, might serve Him without fear,
75  in holiness and righteousness before Him all 
     our days.

The text sums it up our role pretty well. “That we might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness.” The problems begin when we lose sight of this goal. In order to live as this verse suggests, we need to defeat two foes; neglect and fear. These two attitudes or emotional states would derail us from the life God wants from us either one at a time or in concert.

Neglect of God is something every person has to deal with today. While we might believe we have the corner of the market of the busyness scale this excuse has plagued mankind since the fall in to sin. The moment the ground became cursed and Adam had to work very hard to accomplish the goal of feeding his family the excuse of “I’m too busy” was probably born. God become  neglected. While it is a convenient excuse, it is not a good one and is born out of a self-deluded lie.

Fear can undo even the strongest of Christians. This is not the good kind of fear; the fear of the Lord (which is really all about respect, worship, and awe.) No, this is fear of our fellow human beings. What will they think of me? How will they judge my life? Will they like me? Will they treat me well? And for Christians, this fear runs right to the core of our faith. What will others think of my faith? Will I be laughed at because of it? This fear is debilitating and will stand in the way of your relationship with God every time. Now we get to the heart of Zechariah’s prayer. He is asking God to help him remember all that God has done so that he can serve without that fear for the rest of his life. That needs to be our prayer too. Why do we remember all that God has done for us? So that we might serve Him without fear . . . all of our days.

Prayer: Gracious Lord God, please teach me how to fear only You. Should I become concerned about the opinion of others, please help me remember what You have done and to put aside those fears. Teach me how to seek Your face before the ideas of others, that You might be focus of my service. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

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