As I'm reading through 2 Kings, I keep reading about kings who are either walking or not walking in the ways of their father David, and even read reminders to the Israelites about what happened in the desert (approximately 1400 BC). This keeps happening over and over as I'm reading. For example, 2 Kings 16 says that Ahaz (king in approximately 740 BC) did not follow in the ways of his father David (king in 1000 BC).
I sucked in history class. My excuse to my parents, my teachers, my peers and whoever else learned that I didn't do well was that I only cared about what was ahead and didn't think it was worth time to learn about what had already passed. The wars of the past were over and decided. I was living now in what the result was, so why did I care about the events that led to the result?
Based on what I'm seeing in Scripture, I think God would still show up today and ask us if we remember how He took us out of slavery and into the Promised Land? Of course, most of us are not Jewish, but I think the significance of the journey and the promise is for the entire body of Christ.
Let's look back at the years I mentioned in the first paragraph - 250 years after David's reign, God is still referring to him as "father" of the current king. Almost 700 years after God brought the Israelites through the desert, He's still pointing them back to it as a reminder that He is faithful and that He loves them. Do you know where your descendants were 250 years ago? 700 years ago?!
God wants us to look back at His sovereignty in our past to know that we can trust Him in our future. Interestingly, God doesn't just point us back to our past, but to the past of our fathers, our grandfathers and even further back than that. He wants us to know that He's been there before and He'll be there again.
That's a problem for me (as it has been for people all through history - the exact reason they needed to be reminded of it all through the Old Testament). My wife and I were looking at videos from our African safari honeymoon a couple nights ago - something we did less than two years ago, and it already feels like a dream. My memory has lost hold of the details and the moments in between the highlights. That's what happens in our walk with God. We forget about the details. I have to work hard to remember that when God asked me to move across the country, He helped meet my every need as I asked Him to. I remember the hard times and the times of struggle, but it's a lot more difficult to remember the times when God stepped in and opened doors. Even as I try to remember that God was helping me and answering prayer, it's hard to remember in what ways. I know that I am remembering some instances and forgetting others. Overall, most of my memory of the situation is just reminding myself that I knew at the time God was present and walking me through the situation.
Satan wants us to forget. He sends new people and new events into our stories to try to create forgetfulness and confusion. He wants our focus to be on something different. He wants to get us to a point where we, even for a moment, forget about the power of Christ, and try to do things on our own because it creates doubt and creates a barrier in our minds from the moments that God led us through difficulties. He wants us to be confused enough to depend on our own power to create change.
I was thinking about all of this in relation to Matthew 18:3 where Jesus tells us to have the faith of little children. What do children have differently than we have as adults that gives them that child-like faith that Jesus is pointing us toward? I think it's an inability to see and remember the faults of their parents and leaders. Why do little children cry for mommy and daddy every time something goes wrong? Because they know mommy and daddy have made it better in the past. They don't have any pride in their own abilities yet. They rely on their "perfect" parents to make everything better every time. It's not until they get older that they start to grow in pride and maybe even realize that their parents aren't as perfect as they had always thought that they start to make their own decisions and decide certain things their parents led them away from might be permissible or may even lead to some sort of enjoyable gain.
We don't need to get that way with God. His reminders throughout history show us that He's never let us down and that He has power over every situation. At what point do we start to put more trust in the doctor than we put in the Creator of the world? At what point do we decide that the temporary satisfaction of sexual immorality or alcohol and drugs is a better feeling than the Holy Spirit flowing through us? At what point do we decide that our tongues and the words we use can be shared for both cursing and loving? At what point do we start to walk in the things that we teach our children to stay away from?
We think that because we're older we have some sort of wisdom that allows us to partake in things that we don't trust our children to partake in. We forget that Paul had to write letters to the churches reminding them to stay away from the things that the culture around them was partaking in. We forget that the alcohol addiction that our relatives had ruined their marriage, or that the drug addiction led them to overdose. We forget that sexual relationships outside of marriage have caused harm to the people we love or separations of families. We forget when we've seen words and phrases cause division or pain, or when heard by a child, confusion and a loss of witness. We forget about the life of pride that lost everything, causing the pushing away of everything else. We may be older, but we're still the children of God. We still need to remember where God has been present in our past. We still need to look back and see where we may have had a golden calf moment or a desire to seek something out that wasn't God.
In Matthew 18:3, Jesus is telling us to be in a place where we don't live as if we have the power to avoid temptation. He's asking us to live a life that doesn't think we can take care of it on our own or that we have enough wisdom in an area to do it apart from God. And all throughout the Old Testament, God is pointing us back to moments in history that teach us how living as wise and independent adults was the beginning of downfalls.
Watch how young children act in response to their parents. I'd suggest watching children that you know and not just watching children at the park... that's just not a good idea. Watch where the child goes when something bad happens. Watch how the child includes mommy and daddy when they meet a new friend or experience something new. Watch how obedience is learned and tested, but then how it is installed and lived out. Is that how your life looks with God?
That's the relationship He wants from us. That's the relationship that keeps God at the forefront of our minds so Satan doesn't get a foothold. It's the relationship that keeps us from thinking we can play with temptation and beat it, but instead helps build a wall in front of it. A relationship that gets us across the monkey bars for the first time without a fear of falling.
