Memory Processing
PPT 1 Open
PPT 2 Message title
Previously I have preached: My eye affects my heart from Lamentations 3:51. In that passage Jeremiah is crying because of what he sees happening to the young girls of his nation in a time of judgment. What his eyes saw brought great sadness to his heart. What you see can affect you emotionally.
Lot's eyes affected his heart (worldly lust)
The 10 spies eyes affected their heart (fear)
David's eyes affected his heart (sexual lust)
Peter's eyes affected his heart (he sank)
This morning we want to speak on our memories affecting our heart.
Guard your heart with all diligence. There are enemies without (things we see for example), and enemies within. (Our thoughts can be an enemy)
Memory can be a storehouse of blessing, or a bomb waiting to explode.
This is for many a nostalgic time of year. You will see lists on the Internet and on TV of people we lost this year. With that as a backdrop I thought I would speak on memory, and my message is basically going to be this: you can train that dog, the golden retriever we call memory, and you should.
The scriptures are full of texts that have to do with memory, I find it interesting that the very first instances of memory have to do with God, and His people.
PPT 3 Text
Ge 8:1 Then God turned his attention (remembered KJV) to Noah and all the wild animals and farm animals with him on the ship. God caused the wind to blow and the floodwaters began to go down. (MSG)
Ge 9:13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
Ge 9:14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds,
Ge 9:15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.
God could have remembered how evil the world was but He made a decision to remember something good.
The founder of the Red Cross, Clara Barton was once reminded by someone of an injustice and hurt done to her. Clara said she didn't remember it, the friend insisted and gave a few more details to which Clara said: "I distinctly remember deciding to forget that.."
Properly handling negative memories is a key to being an overcomer in life. Conversely, if you don't learn how to deal with bad memories you can live, a negative and depressed life. It really can be as simple as that.
Here are just a few memory verses from the scriptures:
We remember the leeks and the garlic we had in Egypt (Nu 11:5)
Memory can be selectively stupid.
What? did they forget the bricks and mortar, and hard labor, how terribly Pharaoh treated them, and murdered their children? Failure to remember the pain living in Egypt (sin) can bring, has caused many to return to a sinful lifestyle. Memory can be stupid, if it is not trained.
Remember Lot's wife
The rich man in hell remembered he had 5 brothers and wanted to warn them
This do in memory of Me
The prodigal son got saved by his good memories:
He remembered he had a wonderful father.
He remembered even slaves were treated better by his father that the world was treating him.
He remembered the way home
Memory can be an asset or an enemy. It can lead you home or back to the enemies camp.
There are things God commands us to remember.
PPT 3 text
Deuteronomy 15:15 And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing to day.
Read the text again, does God want us to focus on the slave we were or on the redeeming He did? The Redeeming.
A. What is memory?
Memory is stored information. You cannot unstore it. We can't just delete files like we do on a computer. If your files are being deleted it means your brain is dying, or you are suffering from amnesia. Even when brain activity ceases in parts of your brain the memories are still there you just can't access them.
I tell you that to say that memories cannot be removed. Whatever bad that was done to you or by you will always be stored in your brain. But that doesn't mean you have to live in those painful memories. If you want to be an overcomer in life you will have to learn how to deal with painful issues in your past. You can't undo them, but the pain that is associated with them can be relieved.
Memory is absolutely essential - remembering where the bathroom is essential for example. Thank God for memory.
Shared memories connect us, as friends, family, a nation, a sports team, a high school/college group etc.
Computers have memory, the difference between us and them is that we interpret our memories, and we can selectively choose which memories to focus on. That is the key to everything.
Memory is like a golden retriever fetching material without conscious input.
Your brain spits up stuff without conscious input all the time. Or does it? Is it a super computer that is always doing searches like windows explorer? I think so. You think about something and your brain starts pulling up related search items from your memory. You don't ask it to do it, it just does it. But memory can't force you which subjects to focus on. It is just like a windows search, you have to ignore some results as not productive.
I want to illustrate what I am trying to teach you and use the analogy of a breed of dog known as the Golden Retriever. That breed of dog was bred to retrieve hunted game without damaging it. A hunter would shoot a duck for example and the Retriever would jump in the lake, swim to the shot fowl and return it to it's master's feet. Memory is in some ways like that. It will pull something up inside your brain and lay it at your feet, it is up to you to decide what to do with it. Ignore it, or pick it up for further investigation and examination.
Lets stay with this golden retriever analogy for a second. If you had a house with a dog food factory close by with lots of dead rats in it, and everyday your golden retriever would bring a dead rat home and lay it on your porch. What would you do? The problem is not that there are rats, but with the retriever that keeps laying them at your doorstep. But that dog can be trained. If every time your retriever brought home a dead rat and your frowned at it, the dog will learn, the dog wants your approval, it will stop bringing back what you don't want. In some ways memory works just like that. If you pick up the rat the dog will think you like what it is doing and bring you them time and time again. But if you ignore, the dog will get the idea and stop it. The rats will still exist, but they don't have to keep coming to the forefront of your life.
People with bad memories, the problem is not that they have bad memories, but with how they process those memories. Everybody has bad memories. Some men came home from the Gulf and other wars and they live mostly normal lives, with occasional nightmares. Some men come home and don't function for the rest of their lives. Both have similar memories. Both saw the same atrocities. Both may have killed, or seen good friends killed. The problem is not with the memories it is with the processing of them. You can train that dog. If every time it brings up a negative memory you refuse to pick it up, the retriever will bring it less and less often.
What you feed grows what you starve dies. Tell the retriever you don't want that rat. Get rid of it, don't stare at it, and smell it, and look at the maggots in it, get rid of it as quickly as possible. The more you entertain it the more the golden retriever will bring it. You can't get rid of the memory, but you can get it down to a very manageable size, it begins by ignoring it while it is too emotionally charged to successfully handle.
You can't get rid of the memory, but you can be free of the hurt that goes along with it, but only if you bury it long enough to begin healing.
If that weren't true how could any of the survivors of the holocaust have ever had a meaningful life?
These young girls that have been abducted by Isis and Boko Haram they are damaged beyond imagining. But does that mean they must live under the curse of what was done to them for the rest of their lives? I am not minimizing the awfulness and horror of their suffering I am simply trying to say that people have recovered from the worst horrors imaginable, and the survivors are the ones who have learned to do what I am advising this morning. Don't let the golden retriever bring home rats. Your memory can be trained. Training your memory is not denying things that happened, it is recognizing that unless you put some things into the background noise of your life, you cannot function successfully in the present.
You can't undo your parents got divorced, or that a mate cheated on you, or that a child died, or that you did something very stupid and destructive in a different season of your life. Because you can't undo it, doesn't mean it has to define you. Let me give you a couple quick pieces of advice that can be very helpful if you let it.
1. Use your memory to be an instrument of blessing
PPT 4 Text
Psalms 42:6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.
Barbara Streisand had a hit with a song about memories, there is some profound wisdom and advice at the end of that song.
Memories may be beautiful and yet,
What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget.
So it's the laughter
We will remember,
Whenever we remember
The way we were;
The way we were.
It's the laughter we will remember. Happy people are people who choose to bring up good memories. They have realized there is no value or practical benefit of reminding yourself of the pain you or others have caused. Not only is there no benefit but it will make you a miserable person. On the other hand if you will focus on good memories you will be much happier personally and a joy to be around.
2. You choose the clips that go in your life's highlight video, no one else chooses them for you. Choose wisely
Right now on Facebook they have this year in review thing going on. It is a software thing that picks pictures and posts of your year and tries to put a positive spin on them. Suppose it was a my terrible rotten miserable year review, would you want to read that? Would you read it every day, and try to add things to the file all the time? That would be very self destructive. That is exactly what some people do with their memories and with the cataloging of their life events.
Bad things happen, but don't make highlight videos out of them. Make highlight videos out of the good things that happen.
For example remember what God's grace has caused you to forget.
PPT 5 text
Isa 54:4 "Fear not, for you will not be put to shame; Neither feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced; But you will forget the shame of your youth, And the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.
3. You don't need your memories healed, you need to train your golden retriever. The problem is not with your memory, but with your signal processor, until you recognize that you will be held a prisoner of your memories.
De 8:2 And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years...
You can't undo the past, but with God's grace you can focus on other things, and move forward, or you can choose to live in the graveyard of your mind. You can choose to be a survivor, you can be like Clara Barton and make a purposeful decision to let go of painful things in the past.
When I was in my late teens I suffered with depression. One of the things that bummed me out the most was relationships that had failed, or never happened. There was a song that epitomized they way I felt at that time in my life. "I was in the right place, but it must've been the wrong time. I'd of said the right thing but I must have used the wrong line." It my sadness I wrongly remembered the words of the song and I would sing the second line this way? "I was with the right chic but I must've used the wrong line." Anyway it pretty much summed up my negative view of relationships at that time in my life. I would get sad seeing other people holding hands, it would bum me out thinking I had no one to love. Then I became a Christian. Unfortunately some of my bad thinking persisted into my Christian life.
Then I came across that famous text in Romans: be transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Rom 12:2) Getting saved brought wonderful and radical change into my life. One day I was in bondage to drugs the next I was completely free. God used the text in Romans 12 to teach me that along with being born again I needed to change my thinking habits. Changing thinking habits is transformative. One day fussing in my mind about being single and all the failed relationships I had had, I felt like the Lord told me to change my thinking on the subject. Instead of complaining about what went wrong, why not focus instead on whatever good I may have had in those relationships. Fun going out on a date, laughing and smiling. That even though they didn't work out, the journey still had some fun moments. I found this was better and made life more enjoyable than torturing myself by showing movie clips in my mind of all my sad moments. You have control over the movie that runs in your mind. You can stop and rewind and play it over and over or you can change channels. You can also transform your mind by trying with the grace of God to put a different spin on life's events. It didn't work out because God doesn't want you to be happy, or you can say it didn't work out because God had something different (better) for you.
Often the difference between a happy life and a sad life is not life's circumstances themselves but how you process them. It is the spin you put on them in your mind that determines your emotional health. Either all things work out for good (happy person) or nothing ever goes right for me (sad person). One of the most joyful people I have known in my life is my wife's cousin Judy. Judy had severe diabetes. In the course of several years she lost one leg below the knee than another to that horrible disease. Then she went blind in an eye, then she began to lose fingers one by one. Yet she exhibited more joy on consistent basis than almost everyone I have ever met in my life. In the midst of physical horror, Judy continued to choose to be happy and laugh. She has since gone to be with Jesus, and I am sure she has heard His, "well done good and faithful servant..." She was a living epistle that joy is a choice.
As we close this service I am aware that many have very painful issues in your past and present. This message has simply been a road map to help you navigate your journey. Renew your mind, transform your life.
Close: Pray for people who need help with their memory processor.
