Forgetful

Remember yesterday we talked about the disciples changing Jesus conversation to their conversation. It is often hard to follow THE conversation set by Jesus because we have a little ADD. We are easily distracted and very forgetful. Read Matt.16 and Mark 8 on this. You will see that Jesus nails the problem of changing conversations by identifying three problems: 1) Little faith; 2) Faulty eyesight; 3) Lack of understanding. These three in combination lead to hardness of heart. But what causes such a condition, such a process to be in place in our lives. If we are constantly missing Jesus' point and running off on our own tangents and having our own conversations, and not His, what do we do to stop it. Again, Jesus tells us in the text the key to fixing this problem. We need to fix our rememberer. Jesus says, "Don't you remember?" The present is so noisy that we forget yesterday. The current situation dominates, we get sucked into it, and forget the context of our lives. The current situation does not set the tone for the whole of life. It does not define you. This morning I wrote:

"So why do we so often forget what God has done, even in our own lives? That's simple too-the current situation, the immediate stressors, the contemporary concerns, are often more powerful that previous victories. Our brain is wired to return us to our previous feelings we felt when we were threatened in other situations. This auto-response is powerful and can shut down our rememberer. We see it played out throughout the Bible story. The children of Israel experienced great deliverance from Egypt but forgot it when they saw the giants."

Peter was in the boat that day listening to Jesus explain what went wrong with the conversation. Later he wrote 2 Peter 1:3ff. In this Peter reminds us we have 1) everything we need for life and godliness through Jesus; 2) great and precious promises which make us partakers of the divine nature; 3) escaped the corruption in the world. Since these things are Really our present Reality (not merely the circumstance we are currently experiencing) then we are free to grow and add godly traits to our lives making us useful and effective. But if we do not have these qualities in increasing measure it is evidence we have an eye problem and a memory problem (read the text). Peter goes on make it clear an essential ingredient to staying on the Jesus conversation is to remember. He says, "I shall always be ready to remind you of these things...." We change the conversation to meaningless trivia or pointless worry because we don't remember the larger context of life which includes what Jesus has done and is doing in our lives. We need to pay attention and stay with the program and follow His script and get in sinc and keep in step and learn to key life off of the key he is playing in. When we change keys in the middle of the song it sounds awful.