The Biblical Art & Practice of Remembering by the Spirit

It’s not challenging for our brains to remember all the times we were hurt. Why? It’s a self protection mechanism. But self protection and oneness cannot coexist. 
So the world says cut off what hurt you and forget about it! That’s not biblical. We see time after time examples of God Himself commanding the Israelites to REMEMBER what He did, where He rescued them from, how He provided… 

Now it’s your turn to learn how to remember by the Spirit and how this applies to biblical marriage God’s way. It changes everything! 

Transcript

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Welcome back to the High Level Wife Podcast. I'm Chelsea Holm, your hostess, and we do Marriage God's Way here. And I want to talk about the practice and the art of remembering and how this is a biblical practice. And we see it modeled for us time and time again in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Like we see this practice of what it means to walk in the spirit and remembering what God has done, because only God could do it. And he requires our obedience and our full surrender to him, to his authority, to his dominion, to his majesty, to his power. So then he moves, right? The Israelites had to leave Egypt and then God parted the Red Sea. The Israelites had to step into the Jordan and then he stopped the waters. The Israelites had to arm themselves to go to war against the enemies of the land that God was going to give into their hand. And then God delivered them. But there were instances where they decided in their heart and they presumed God was going to be with them. And God was like, I'm not going with you. Don't go there. And they did it and they got their butts handed to them, right? So I want to teach you today how to remember according to the spirit. Because so many wives are remembering. You're practicing the art of remembering, but you're practicing the art of remembering according to the flesh. And right now you are stuck in this pattern of remembering all the hurts. And memories are an interesting thing. Memories can evoke emotion in an instant, right? A smell can take you right back to a place. A sound can take you right back to a place. Just walking in somewhere that has the same kind of atmosphere as a certain time of your life can take you right back as if you are reliving that moment again. And when we walk according to the flesh, we focus on the hurts because our brains were designed to keep us safe from harm. And memories are a powerful thing because they alter our brains and the neurological connections in order to keep us safe. It's a self-protection mechanism. And so when we walk in accordance with the flesh of remembering the hurts of the past, we stay stuck. But the opposite of that, and the counter, the counterpart, the honestly, the cure for this of saying stuck in hurts is to remember according to the spirit. Remember what God has done. Just um yesterday, yeah, yeah, yesterday, uh I was leading the high-level wife call and it was towards the end, and I had opened it up, and some of the wives were sharing, and some of the wives were asking questions, and um, I was giving some feedback to them, you know, doing some live coaching in the moment. And um, one wife in particular had recently been obedient to God and confessed some hidden things to her husband that that he received in the spirit, right? But it still doesn't mean that it didn't hurt, you know, it it still didn't mean that a wound was not created in that moment and it and it didn't negate the fact that that wound now needs to heal. And while she was sharing, God just gave me this image of how for our for each, for our spouse, for us, like we have wounds that might still be open and gaping. Um, more often than not, when like what we're doing when we're walking in the flesh of remembering, what we're doing is we're sticking a knife back in that wound and wondering why it still hurts us over and over and over again. Right. And so the image God gave me was of the healing that He does. And but there's always going to be a scar that remains because that scar, just like the rocks they place across the other side of the Jordan when they had passed safely through, they put those rocks there to remember, to practice the art of remembering in the spirit. And so the scars still remain, and they are those rocks that help us to remember in the spirit of look what God has done, look where we were, and look what God did. Look at how destroyed we were, look at all the pieces that were shattered and scattered, and God put them back together. And not only did he do that, but he restored the years the locusts have eaten twofold, tenfold, just blowing our minds. And so I shared this with this wife, and I just said, hey, just so you know, that scar is always gonna be there. That wound is going to heal over time. And your husband is gonna have to continue to walk in the spirit and deny his flesh. He's gonna have to continue to be intentional and diligent about remembering in the spirit and not in the flesh. He's going to have to deny his flesh, right? He's going to have to name this hurt. He's going to have to release it to God in full surrender. And he's going to have to anchor in truth so that he can respond and walk forward, right? And that's his walk with the Lord. Okay. But you both are still going to see that scar. And it is up to you to remember in the spirit of what God has done and how far he has brought you. Um, I had another wife on the call sharing yesterday, actually, two, and then a bunch of other wives chimed in and they were like, oh my gosh, we feel the same. That there are so many. Apparently, June is the month for weddings, which I guess makes sense, right? It's not super hot yet. It's nice outside, outdoor weddings, all that stuff. But like June, I think probably is the biggest month that people get married. I have no idea, but that that would be my assumption. Um, but anyway, one of the wives was sharing, she said, you know, we've been married for um I think 10 years now. I can't remember exactly how many, you know, me in numbers, but um, they had been married for X number of years. But really, just the last year felt like that was when their marriage started. Like a year ago, their marriage actually started because they were both fully surrendered to the Lord and they were both committed to walking through the messiness of the areas that God wanted to heal, and he has continued to bring that healing in and through both of them and in their marriage. And it was almost as if all of those years before were washed away. And I was like, that's exactly what God does when we are obedient to him, when we do marriage his way. He and he alone can take all of those years of hurts and pains and looking at each other as the enemy and remembering in the flesh, right? And continuing to stab the wounds and wondering why it hurts. He can take all of those years and he can remove them as far as the east is from the west from us. And in the newness of life, as new creations, when we walk forward in marriage after, like post-God transformation, right? Like it's as if it almost like started over, but more abundantly. I think of Job, right? Like everything was taken from him, but then when God restored it, when God was glorified, God restored Job. And he did it like twofold, right? More than he had before, more abundantly than he had before. And that's the experience these wives were sharing. And they were all coming into agreement, like, yeah, that's it. And the wives who aren't there yet, you know, it was encouraging them and giving them hope that that's what's ahead of them. And so the practice and the art of remembering in the spirit is biblical, it is godly. We see it every single time God is getting ready to bring the Israelites into a new place, or he has just brought them into a new place, or he's taking them out of a place. Because what do the Israelites want to do? They want to remember Egypt, they want to remember their time of slavery as if it was like better, right? Because our brains have a funny way of doing that, of like, and it makes sense, like neurologically, what our brains are actually doing is our brains prefer the known discomfort than the unknown discomfort, right? And this is why people stay stuck for so long because we get comfortable with our crap and our poopy diapers, and it's more uncomfortable to take it off and learn how to daily put on fresh, clean underwear, right? Like that picture will stick with you forever. And unfortunately, what we do is when we remember, according to the flesh, we have this nostalgic view of what it used to be because that's the known discomfort that we have. And we're like, give me that poopy diaper back, because at least I knew what that was like. I didn't enjoy it, but I knew what that was like. And I felt quote unquote safe there when really, no, it was dysfunctional and it was hurtful, right? There was no freedom in that. And so the art of remembering what God has done, how far he has brought you, where he has healed what was broken and hurt, where he has brought wholeness to where there were just parts and pieces and destruction, this we have to do this because if we don't, there are there are certain things that can happen. We can either go back into remembering in the flesh, right? Because that that is the counterpart, that is the opposite of remembering in the spirit. So that's like the first caution is if you are not intentionally and diligently remembering and practicing remembering in the spirit, you will return to your vomit. You will. That's the first caution. The second caution is if you don't intentionally remember in the spirit of what God has done and how far he has brought you and what he has done in and through you, you will begin to think that you did it. You will deceive yourself and convince yourself that you were the one that did it. And it wasn't you, it was God and God alone. I was just reading this morning in Deuteronomy. I just started Deuteronomy, and I just I love it. Um I'm telling you guys, you go, if you if you haven't read the Old Testament, like you don't understand who God is. You need to read the Old Testament because his character, his heart, his ways are revealed. The last several mornings I've woken up and my first thought was, God, I love your ways. Your precepts are good and your law is good before me. And I love you, Lord, and I want to walk in it. Um, Joshua was the one that wholly followed the Lord. And this morning my prayer was, God, I want to wholly follow you completely. And I don't want to presume to go any place where you're not gonna be with me. Um, but anyway, so I was reading in Deuteronomy and um hang on, my my brain has to catch up with my mouth here. Uh I was gonna share that. What was I gonna share? What was I gonna share? I don't know what I was gonna share. Well, on that when my train just uh my train just went off the tracks, but hey, it is what it is. Um I guess it wasn't important. Um so, but I want to leave you with this thought of uh how are you intentionally intentionally practicing the art of remembering in the spirit? And if you're not, can you see right now, if you step back and you look at the whole picture and your thought life and examine your thought life, when you examine your thought life, can you see how practicing the art of remembering in the flesh is actually hurting you further and keeping you stuck? Okay. I just wanted I paused for a long time there. Sorry, you probably thought like where'd you go? But I pause there because I want you to really sit with that. I want you to sit with those two questions. And if the answer is you are walking in the flesh, what I want you to do is I want you to pray, God, you know me, you know everything about me, you know the hurts that I've walked through, the experiences I've had, how I've reacted and created subconsciously these self-protection mechanisms, and how I've continued to remember those hurts. God, I lay these hurts down at your feet. I surrender them fully to you, and I ask for you to teach me what I don't know in order to move forward. I ask you to teach me your ways, your heart. I ask you to teach me how to remember, how to practice the art of remembering in the spirit. God, you are my everything. I love you, and everything I do is to the praise of your glory in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. I'll see you on the next episode.