Have your bad experiences become memorials?

When God instructed the Israelites to build a memorial He was guiding them to set a marker. He had done something miraculous to move His people forward and prosper them in His plan and the marker (or memorial) signified a turning point or the beginning of a new season.

Consider the parting of the Jordan River, when God enabled the Israelites to walk through the river on dry ground then instructed them to set up a memorial of 12 stones. Once this was completed, marking their miraculous entrance into His plan and promises, they left behind their desert wanderings and began taking their promised inheritance (Joshua 4).

A memorial can be a physical and visual marker, or it can be a mental marker, but either way it’s spiritual! A marker will either serve as a remembrance of the goodness and faithfulness of God, or it will serve as a ball and chain to hold you to the past. When God called for a memorial to be erected in the Bible, it was because He had propelled His people forward through power, signs and wonders, and they were to remember this as they struggled to walk through the tough times ahead.

We often set up memorials in our minds: declarations of stubbornness and commitments to remember hurts, wrongs and pains above the goodness of God. We build these memorials when we’ve had difficult circumstances or been wronged or we’re set in a certain way of doing things. Instead of moving into God’s promised land we keep ourselves tied to those markers and continue to wander in the desert.

God’s markers are intended to propel us forward and enable us to fulfill His plans, but the enemy’s markers are intended to keep us sunk in his mire of disgust and fear, or even stubbornness. God’s markers focus on what He has done and can do, in spite of the difficult things that have happened in our lives. God’s markers are viewed through the eyes of faith, whereas the markers of the enemy are viewed through a spirit of hurt and offense, or even tradition and habit.

You may remember an event in your life and that memory has kept you captive and disabled God’s power. Perhaps that memory even has a religious idea attached to it: this is the way God operates because it’s how He did it last time. Maybe your memorial is the idea that God can only work in a certain way and in a specific ‘spiritual’ atmosphere. Or maybe you find yourself saying “I can’t move forward because….” or “God’s word isn’t working for me because….,” but the real ‘because’ is that you have placed a stone of remembrance in your mind and it’s taking precedence over the power and promises of God.

But today is the day to be set free and move forward; it’s a day to tear down the memorials of the enemy. Today is the day to repent of setting up that memorial, shift your focus to what God can do (and allow Him to do it in His way), and step into your new season. Today is the first day of the rest of your life: if you choose to annihilate the marker!

You will likely have to continually press forward and change your way of thinking, or get some help moving forward, but the first step is to remove the memorial and disallow it from keeping you tied down. God is willing and able to help you; His grace and mercies are fresh and new every morning, so don’t let them go to waste (Lam. 3:22-23).

“The enemy has been cut off and [his markers] have vanished in everlasting ruins. You have plucked up and overthrown their cities [the strongholds and memorials in our minds]; the very memory of them has perished and vanished” (Psalm 9:6 HCSB, adapted).