Remembering God's Favor
It is true that God is not a respecter of persons, but he does have favorites.
What?!
Yes, God has favorites! That may not ring true to many people for several possible reasons. They may have:
imported democracy into their theology, where everybody has equal opportunity;
or socialism into their theology where everybody, no matter what, gets the same results;
or entitlement into their theology where they deserve to get no matter what they do;
or even reparations into their theology where they, poor victims, deserve some payback.
God doesn’t think this way.
God’s favorites are those who, through obedience and faith, spiritually position themselves to be where the flow of his favor goes.
The Old Testament tells of those who were once in the flow and moved away from it by a failure to remember how they got there.
In Judges 8:34 we read: “And the children of Israel remembered not the Lord their God who delivered them from all their enemies on every side.”
When considering all the favor God’s people had, this memory lapse is amazing!
It is in the book of Judges that we see God’s people losing the Promise Land. What a lamentable legacy! For forty years they missed out on the Promise Land, and then for four hundred years they saw it slip out of their hands.
Their abundance, their astonishing favor, their protected and privileged life was gone! And one wonders if forgetting played a key role in this outcome.
How could anyone forget the Lord’s sufficiency and supply?
Our search for an answer will likely be rewarded if we begin with ourselves. In truth, there’s no great mystery here; we’ve all replicated a faulty, short-term memory in our lives.
See if this next thought seems correct to you: Today’s problems often omit in their approach yesterday’s answers.
We forgot the wisdom God had given us.
Mindful of this tendency to forget, Faber wrote:
Chrysostom, also, would have us remember with special gratitude the special and unknown blessings God has heaped upon us. “God,” he says, “is an overflowing fountain of clemency flowing upon us, and round about us, even when we know it not.”
The Bible even stipulates what many of these blessings are. In Psalm 103 we read: Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. The first benefit identified in this passage is a major one—forgiveness.
Judson Cornwall writes, “For the converted, remembrance removes regret. While our memory circuits maintain a consciousness of the act, the grace of God has removed the sting of guilt and the stain of sin.” According to Cornwall, “We do not remember with regret; we remember with rejoicing.”
A second benefit the psalmist says we should remember are the healings of the past.
There are medicine bottles in your cabinets and mine we don’t use anymore. That sickbed which once witnessed our tortured turning isn’t witnessing that now—all because God was faithful to heal us!
But have we remembered what he did for us? Or are we like those nine lepers who got healed but never came back to thank the Lord?
Someone has said if you want to find gratitude, you’re going to have to look for it in the dictionary because it isn’t likely to be found among the people of God.
P.T. Forsythe once declared, “We have churches of the nicest, kindest people who have nothing apostolic or missionary about them because they never knew the soul’s despair or its breathless gratitude.”
A thinking person is a thanking person! And there is so much for which to be thankful.
In his book, Modern Parables, Fulton Ousler wrote about a woman who had worked in his home when he was a little boy.
Born a slave, this woman’s full name was Anna Maria Cicily Sophia Virginia Avalon Thessalonians. It had been a plantation owner’s idea of a joke—to give this black baby a long, forgettable name for her baptism!
By the time the author of this book knew her, she was well acquainted with advanced years.
One day, the young Mister Ousler saw his maid, Anna, sitting at the kitchen table with her hands folded in prayer.
Looking up at the ceiling, she said, “Much obliged, dear Lord, for the vittles.”
Just then the little boy interrupted to ask, “What’s vittles, Anna?”
“Vittles?” she said, “That’s what you eat and drink. That’s what vittles is!” Anna went on to say, “And giving thanks is something I learned from an old Negro preacher. He taught me that you have to go looking for things to give thanks for, because sometimes you can walk right by them and never see them.”
Next, repositioning herself in her chair as she became more animated in her speech, Anna illustrated her point by saying, “Take this morning, for instance. I woke up and I laid there kind of lazy like, and I thinks, ‘What have I to give thanks for this morning?’
It’s the honest truth: I can’t think of anything to give thanks for! So I say to myself ‘What must the good God think about me, his child, when I can’t think of one single thing to give thanks for?’”
“Then, my daughter Josie comes opening the door of my bedroom and out from the kitchen there comes the most delicious odor to ever tickle the nose of this old woman—coffee! I say, ‘Much obliged, dear Lord, for the coffee.’”
Extending her point, Anna continued by saying, “I have to help Josie with the housework, you know, and it’s mighty hard work! Your Ma will tell you that.
So as I’m dusting around, I come to the mantle where my Little Boy Blue is.
Now, I’ve had that little China Boy from before the time your Ma was born. He was given to me for Christmas when I was still a slave. There he sits on the mantle, shiny blue, with his little gold horn to the mouth. I love that little China Boy! Much obliged, dear Lord, for my Little Boy Blue.”
“As I keep on dusting,” Anna continued, “I see so many things that bring back memories. I look at the pictures on the wall—and they look back at me! They’re the people I’ve known! Some of them are in heaven now ... and some of them are still alive down here. Much obliged, dear Lord, for such good memories.”
Many months after this conversation Anna became sick, so sick she wasn’t at work. Finally, word was received from Josie that Anna was dying.
The next day the boy and his mother took a cab across the city to a dingy little street where Anna lived. As they entered the house, mother and son could see Anna on her bed. Even from the entrance way it was obvious that she was in considerable pain.
Seeing her toil-worn hands clutched in agony, the little boy thought to himself, “What’s she going to be thankful for now?”
At that very moment Anna opened her eyes and, in a voice that was barely audible, said, “Much obliged, dear Lord, for such fine friends. Much obliged.”
Anna’s “thanksliving” lifestyle is one all of us would do well to follow.
Yes, our suffering may be hard; at times it may even be bewildering. Yet God can bring unmatched blessings precisely there, which is why Alexander Maclaren charged us to “remember that the richest vintages are grown on the rough slopes of the volcano, and lovely flowers blow at the glacier's edge .…”
It was Scripture’s testimony of these blessings that prompted A. B. Simpson to write:
There is a confidence that comes from holding fast to his Word. But there is a confidence that grows out of 10,000 cords of memory and blessing. Promises fulfilled, prayers answered, deliverance given, mercies as countless as the sand, weave themselves at length into a cable of a thousand strands that can never be broken.
“Much obliged, dear Lord, much obliged.”
