Remember

Remember his marvellous works that he hath done, his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth;

I Chronicles 16:12

Remember.  That word is a difficult one for some people.  Personally, I am the kind of person who can easily remember Jimmy Key’s league leading ERA for the Toronto Blue Jays in 1987 (2.76), but will look frantically for my keys while I am holding them in my hand.  As people, we tend to forget things, especially things that we don’t think about all that often.  Our forgetfulness is one of the reasons David told this to the Israelites: “Remember his marvellous works that he hath done”.

Do we remember all of the marvellous works that He has done for us?  How often do we really think about all of the marvellous works that He has done for us and in us?  Maybe a better question would be “has He done a marvellous work in us?”.  If God has done something great for you, that is something that should be remembered often.  Jesus Christ came to Earth, lived a perfect life, died on the cross and rose from the dead.  And He did that to take away my sin.  That is a marvellous work.  If nothing else good ever happens to me in this life, that is still the most marvellous work of all.  But He has done other great things in my life.  It is my job to keep them in remembrance.

When we are remembering and thinking about all of the great and marvellous things that the Lord has done for us, we are going to be thankful.  A person who is focusing on what the Lord has done for them is a person who is not going to have a problem complaining.  We are to be thankful, joyful and content.  And the way to be those things is to focus on Him and all of his marvellous works.  May we keep our eyes on Him and off of ourselves!

Seeking Continually

Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his face continually.

I Chronicles 16:11

David instructs the people in this verse to do two things: 1. seek the Lord and His strength and 2. do it continually.

The Bible instructs us over and over again to seek the Lord.  This verse specifies that we should be seeking His strength.  Of course, there is good reason to seek His strength- we have none of our own.  Without the Lord’s strength, we do not have anything.  He gives us the strength that we need to face life’s trials and troubles.  He gives us strength to live for Him and to reject temptation.  He gives us strength to overcome the flesh and the world.  He is our strength, and, as such, we should be seeking Him.

We should be seeking Him, and we should be doing it all the time.  We should never stop seeking Him.  There is never a time when we can say that we have enough strength.  There is never a time when we don’t need to be seeking Him.  We need to seek Him “continually”.

Glory in His Name

Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord.

I Chronicles 16:10

David tells the people in this verse that they should glory in the holy name of the Lord.  That is good advice for us a few thousand years later.  Paul makes a similar statement in Galatians 6:14, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”  We are not to glory in ourselves.  There is nothing good about me in which I could even begin to glory.  I am a rotten, vile sinner and absolutely nothing more.  The absolute only thing in the world in which I can glory is in the cross of Christ.  There is nothing good about me, but there is everything good about Him.  I am all evil, He is perfect.  I am sin, He is righteousness.  If there is something good about it, it is only and entirely because of Him.

That is what David is saying in this verse.  He tells the people to glory in “His holy name”.  He also tells them to “let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord”.  He doesn’t tell them to rejoice in anything that they have done, but to rejoice in the Lord.  If our heart isn’t “seeking the Lord”, we really have no cause to rejoice. 

As a Christian, all of our joy and rejoicing should be in the Lord and what He has done for us rather than in anything we have done of ourselves.