Why do we Remember God?

How we must purposely remember God in each moment, lest we think we're independent and forget that he is our Creator and judge.

Introduction

• "Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, 'I have no delight in these days.'"
• The word remember conveys where your focus is.
  • Illustration: We often forget about gravity, but without it we couldn't function here on Earth. We also rarely think about our car's windshield, but without it we would have bugs all over our face and our hair blown in all directions.
• Is God like that to you—some gravitational force that keeps things going but is rarely given much thought? Or like a car windshield, do you look right past him and forget what he does?
• God is not like a windshield or gravity, which don't care whether you acknowledge them or not.
• When you go a while without remembering your Creator, you function independently of him. God cares about that.
• If you don't remember your Creator, you won't have trust and confidence in God, and it will be difficult to ask him for things.
  • Illustration: When McClellan and his wife take walks and meet someone, they know the courteous thing to do is to acknowledge their presence and say hello. You don't walk up to a stranger and say, "Hey! My name is Bob. Can I borrow your lawn mower?"
• You know intuitively that you don't ask for things until you've established a level of trust and relationship.
• Your prayer life will be dead and boring if you don't have a relationship with God, because you know intuitively that it's not courteous to ask for things when you haven't established a relationship.
• Does this mean you should stop asking God for things? No! It means that you first need to start remembering your Creator. But how?

Walk through the day with your Creator.

• You begin to remember your Creator simply by talking about your day with him.
  • Illustration: When McClellan and his wife take a walk, much of their time is spent talking about the things that surround them.
• You can start talking to God about what's on your mind at that very moment.
• God doesn't have to be the period at the end of your day or the capital letter of the first word of your sentence; God can be the sentence that underlines your entire day.
• You remember your Creator when you start walking through your day with him.
• Once you've acknowledged God's presence on a daily basis and established a level of trust with him, it will feel much more natural when you ask him for something.
• Many people beat themselves up for having a poor prayer life, because they can't focus themselves for a half hour each morning, but you can just pray about the stuff that comes into your day, all day long.
• Though it takes a little while to learn this skill, you will build a sense of God's presence all day long and find that you are able to ask about things that you never would have thought of in the morning.

Remember that we are creatures.

• It's interesting that the writer of Ecclesiastes uses the word Creator. It's the only time the word is used in the entire book.
• Once you remember that you have a Creator, you remember that you are a creature—a created being.
  • Illustration: Imagine that you've baked a batch of gingerbread people. You have the power to make them live. You soon realize they're not all going to be good gingerbread people. You can't always tell who's with you and who's against you, so you decide to disappear. Some of them say, "We knew it! There was no baker all along. We can do whatever we want!" But others say, "How could we think, reason, speak, sing, and write poetry if we didn't have a baker? We owe everything to the baker!"
• The minute you forget that you are created, you start down a road of independence that is the root of all evil.
• God says: Remember that you are someone's masterpiece. Somebody made you; you are not your own.
• In the New Testament, the story gets even better. The apostle Paul tells us that not only are we made in the image of God, but we're redeemed and purchased with his own blood.
• Once we start thinking of ourselves as creatures, we may think, I don't like the idea that I belong to somebody. I want to be free.
• Or we may think, I am not independent; I am dependent. And since I belong to someone else, one day I'm going to have to answer to the baker.
• Ecclesiastes 12:6 says, "Remember him—before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well."
• That is a metaphor for your life coming to an end. The writer tells us to remember God before that happens.
• Ecclesiastes goes on to say: "And the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it."
• The Hebrew word for spirit means "the breath of life." The author is saying that the breath of life God breathed into us goes back to the One who breathed it.
• As the author writes in verse 8: "Vanity of vanities … all is vanity!" A good paraphrase of that verse would be: Fleeting, fleeting! Everything is fleeting!
• If you try to hang on to something, it slips away. So remember your Creator while you still have the ability to remember.
• This whole section of Ecclesiastes 12 talks about how our bodies decline as we grow older.
• In this context comes that great injunction in verse 6: Remember your Creator before the end.
• The thought that we belong to somebody and are accountable for our actions puts us in our place.

Conclusion

• In Ecclesiastes 12:9, the author says that the teacher taught people knowledge. He wrote down his wisdom in delightful ways, so that the people could remember it.
• The author says, "The words of wise men are like goads." When an animal stubbornly didn't want to move or got stuck in the mud, the shepherd would use a goad to poke the animal along.
• The Book of Ecclesiastes serves as a goad to us.
• The author boils it all down to this: "Fear God and keep his commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment."
• The Creator creates things and holds his creation accountable.
• That may be distasteful to some people—whole kingdoms and philosophies have been launched to try to avoid that very simple thing—but we are accountable.
• As the text says: "God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil."
• We don't get the final say in things.
• We do what we can with what God gives us. He says: Do the right thing, and let me worry about the outcomes. In the end, I'm the only one you have to answer to—and no one else.