Remembering the Sweet Truth
By Wayne Williams --
Paulette and I were on vacation out of state for two Sundays in January and, as enjoyable and refreshing as it was, it was really good to be back with the community we love last week. And to share in the Lord’s table with you all was especially meaningful. Communion is a “memorial meal.” Jesus said, “do this in remembrance of me.” It’s an opportunity to remember that he provided our forgiveness and salvation at great cost to himself.
But in the Bible, remembering is not just a cognitive event. We don’t come to communion and say, “Crackers and juice? What’s that about? Oh yeah, now I remember, Jesus died for me,” like it had somehow slipped our mind. In the Bible, ‘to remember’ means to recall some truth or some event and then let it direct or change the way we live. It means to act on what we know so that we experience the truthfulness of it and our heart is changed. Knowing is not enough. It’s one thing, for example, to know that honey is sweet, but it’s a whole other thing to taste honey and experience the sweetness of it.
Over the years, I have known many of the wonderfully sweet truths that the Bible teaches. I have known, for example, that “God loves me more than I can imagine,” and “the Holy Spirit of Jesus lives in me and can direct me,” and “the Bible will help me know Jesus and get closer to him,” and so many more sweet truths of our faith. I have ‘remembered’ (acted on) those truths as best I knew how, and have experienced the sweetness of them, but only inconsistently.
It was our CORE class that taught me how to remember (in the biblical sense) God’s truth consistently. By dramatically increasing intake of his truth and dramatically decreasing exposure to our secular media’s influence, I ‘remembered’ daily and began to experience, to taste the sweetness of, Jesus’ presence with me and of the life he has for us to live.
I long for you to taste of his sweetness consistently, so I encourage you to register for our next CORE class, which begins on Sunday, February 10, right after the worship service. You can sign up on our website or in the lobby this Sunday.
See you Sunday,
Wayne