Be Mindful - The One Year Salt and Light Devotional

Joshua 4:1-10

What do these stones mean? (Joshua 4:6)

GOD HAD JUST ACCOMPLISHED something amazing—he parted waters again—and his first command was for Joshua and the leaders of Israel to create a memorial. This miraculous event was not to be forgotten; it was to be a landmark in the nation’s history and a constant reminder to the Israelites of the kind of God they served. The significance of these stones was not just to provoke gratitude or to prompt praise, though those responses were certainly important. More so, God knew that the only way Israel could move forward in faith was if its people remembered how he had supported them in the past. Their history was a key to their future. On top of the commands Moses had written and long-ago stories of deliverance, they were to remember that after forty years of wandering in a forbidding wilderness, God had proven he was with them the entire way. That journey toward the Promised Land would be vital information to have in the days, years, and centuries to come.

Your history with God is vital information for your future too. You have likely experienced times when you felt powerless and purposeless and wondered if he was still answering your prayers. Your memories may fail you, but your memorials—if you have written things down or found another way of preserving his work in your life—will encourage you. If you have any history with God at all, you know he has answered prayers, helped you navigate difficult situations, and delivered you from trouble. He has not given you a life of ease, but he has given you his presence and promises. You have experienced them, whether you remember them easily or not.

Find some way of remembering them. You cannot go into your world with the expectation of fruitfulness if you’ve forgotten how he has made you fruitful in the past. You will not anticipate new victories if old ones have escaped your memory. Make a prayer journal, review your successes, begin building stones. They will become lasting testimonies that mean everything to you in adventures and battles to come.

{Lord, forgive me for forgetting all the ways you have blessed, delivered, fulfilled, guided, and prospered me. Bring them to mind, and help me reconstruct your history of faithfulness. May my memorials of your work in my past propel me into my future with faith. Amen.