Presuming, Assuming and Superficial Remembering.

Psalm 103:1-5  ¹ Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! ² Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, ³ who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, ⁴ who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, ⁵ who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. 

Psalm 103 is one of my favorite Psalms. Read it all the way through if you haven't lately. The reason this Psalm is in my top 5 at least (if it is appropriate to rank Psalms, the jury is still out) is that it never ceases to remind me of God's graciousness to me.  Every time I read it, I am convicted and encouraged at the same time. Encouraged at just how much God in his steadfast love is for me (especially as shown in Christ). But also convicted, in light of how much he is for me, at how little I show that I am for Him. At how few times I actually, deeply, consider all that He has done for me. Convicted at my "forgetting all of his benefits" vs 2. 

We are a forgetful people. Not just the ancient Israelites whose forgetfulness, ultimately rooted in unbelief and often accompanied with grumbling, is legendary. No, OUR ability to forget (also rooted in unbelief) should astound us. And yet we forget even to be astounded by our own forgetfulness. A small yet poignant example: Many of us can get up in the morning, read our Scriptures, pray and then by about 10:30am we forget what it was that we read or prayed about.  That is astonishing! But we all, myself included, find ourselves forgetting how much our God is for us.

Or the other type of forgetting that Psalm 103 pushes us to consider. The forgetting that reading Psalm 103 is supposed to help battle. The forgetting that I like to call "Presuming, Assuming and Superficial Remembering"  Why do I call it that?  Because we (I) need some sort of handle to put on what we all naturally do.  And I thought one that was unique might help me to get back out of the habit.  

This is part of the reason Psalm 103 was written.  To get us back out of the habit of presuming, assuming and superficial remembering.  We often presume: We think that our knowledge of what God has done is sufficient and that there is nothing left to think about.  We often assume: that we understand what the Scripture writers are speaking of, even though their are sharing with us something deeper, more profound, more incredible than we think we know. Or we remember superficially: in that our remembering never goes all the way down to our heart.  

Superficial remembering happens when we can read vs 3-5 and we believe that God did these things, but do not take it to heart that He did them for us.  ³ who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, ⁴ who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, ⁵ who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.  If we do not let it in that God has done all these things personally for us, through Christ for His glory, we have only remembered superficially.  We have not allowed the concepts to get personal and therefore our hearts do not find themselves overjoyed, or able to follow the command, "Bless the Lord, Oh my Soul"

So let us endeavor to battle this unbelief, this presuming, assuming and superficial remembering. Let us ask God to help us repent of forgetfulness.   Let us truly let in all the Lord has done for us. Let sink all the way to your heart and soul, not for the sake of experience, but for the sake of belief and remembering and worship and thankfulness.