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The memory is a powerful thing, and the power of being able to remember can be a good or bad thing depending upon the circumstances. If you really want to remember something, then barring accident or illness, you will never forget it. Such is the good power of memory, in that something placed within the mind's eye so quickly and in the briefest instant, can forever be indelibly printed within your thoughts. But if that memory is something that you'd rather forget, then the power of remembering becomes a curse that haunts you throughout your days. All of us have some things imbedded within our memories that we would rather forget and not be able to recall. And some people, it seems, are haunted by the curse of a bad memory -- or should I say by the curse of a good memory recalling bad things.

Technically speaking, memories are not real. Anybody that has ever been, say, in a car accident can vividly remember something about that experience. But as you remember it, you are not technically involved in a car accident all over again. And yet despite its "unrealness" a memory can invoke the most extreme passions and emotions within us. I could through asking you to recall certain things, bring you to a point of sadness or to a point of gladness simply by what you choose to recall within your mind. It is as if through our memories, God has given us the ability to replay certain segments of our life over and over again. And although time sometimes does dull the emotions, when we replay those memories it is as if we are reliving those times and it effects us emotionally and even physically. Such is the power of remembering.

And yet we do have some control over this power. Your memory works through zillions of little connections in your brain called "synapses." Every time you think of something and bring it back to the forefront of your mind, a chemical flows from one synapse to another and deepens the groove of the connection. The more times you think about it, the deeper the groove and the more impressed into your mind that memory becomes. Whereas we will never be able to forget certain things, we have more power over what we remember than we realize. That's why if you want to forgive someone, then you need to let the memory of what they did dull by not thinking of it continually and not bringing it up constantly in conversation! That's why if you want your former life of sin to fade away and not be the center point of your thoughts, then you must distance yourself from such actions and not do them over and over again! Because repetition, more firmly imprints those memories into your mind.

And on the other side of the coin, if you really desire for something to become an everyday part of your memory and be so indelibly printed into your psyche that it becomes a constant companion, then you must repeat them often and bring them to mind over and over and over. That is why four times in the book of 2 Peter, Simon Peter said that he was writing to "bring to remembrance" again something to the saints' minds. He first reminded them of the coming of Jesus Christ and how that sin in our lives blinds us to His cause and keeps us from His glory and how that we must continue in holy living and push through persecution to do what it right and then he says:

They had heard these things before, but for them to live them first and foremost, they had to be reminded of them and have those things more permanently impressed into them! And so it is with preaching: a pastor's work is about 20% percent teaching for the first time and 80% reminding people of what they have already heard. Somebody once estimated that in scripture, there is only about 40 to 50 themes of which to preach and every sermon is just a creative way of re-expressing one of these themes. But we need such reminders because it is the only way that the things of God will be preeminent over the things of this world within our lives!

In like manner of Peter, Paul also wrote to remind people of some things. He wrote the young pastor Timothy and said:

Paul wanted to remind Timothy of his spiritual legacy, and about how that he got into the kingdom of God! And he also wanted to remind the young man of the time that he had received the Holy Ghost with Paul, himself, praying for him! And to remember the call to ministry and the anointing of God and thus fan into flame what God had put within him! Such is the power of remembering: it has the ability to stoke a glowing ember of a fire back into a roaring blaze and to impassion a soul with an earlier call as if it were all new again! If we are as John charged to not "leave our first love" and continue in God as we did when we first grasped Him and received His power, then we must be in the habit of remembering those things! We must remember them until they become so permanently imbedded into our minds that we are brought back to that place of yesterday as if it were today! A revival begins with you choosing to remember!

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And so I've come to preach to you in a different sort of way tonight, and I declare in the name of the Lord, that this is a service of remembrance! Like Paul wrote to Timothy, I want to remind you of the time when you first came to the Lord. I want to remind you of how you got here! I want to remind you of when you first felt God's presence in an Apostolic church. I want you to go back and remember when you received His Spirit. I want you to go back in your mind's eye to the day or night that you were baptized in His precious name! Maybe you are not like Timothy in that there is no mother and grandmother to think about, or maybe you are, but everyone of you has a unique and powerful memory of how you got here!

I have pictures of that revival last year with Bro. Williams where so many of you young people received the Holy Ghost! I remember seeing some of you formed an altar among the pews and raised your hands and received the Spirit of God. I remember seeing some of you responding to the Almighty presence of God that was moving upon you in a way that you had never felt before, and I can remember the change in you as the realization that God's Spirit was personally drawing you to a place of response and surrender.

I remember the phone calls that I received that Sis. Erma had received the Holy Ghost on a Monday morning at home!

I remember the phone call that came almost exactly a year ago that was Bro. Hancock saying that he had received the Holy Spirit on Valentine's Day night! And I also remember the Sunday morning that he decided to be rebaptized in the name of Jesus Christ!

I remember seeing the joy on Sis. Tonya's face when she prayed back through to the Holy Ghost last year and the memory of her in the cold waters of baptism calling Jordon long distance to tell him what she was doing!

I remember the service where almost everyone had gone home but Sis. Diana still lingered in the back praying and got the Holy Ghost almost four hours after service had begun!

I remember the service where Bro. Valentine was filled with the Holy Spirit without a "minister" anywhere around him!

But I remember also seeing Bro. Hector slip out of the pew beside me and head to the front at Men's Conference last year when they had asked "does anybody want the Holy Ghost tonight!" And I remember the smile on his face that let me know before he told me what had happened!

I remember the phone call of Mike Keefer saying "something's on me" and the phone call telling me that he had gotten the Holy Ghost in the fellowship hall after barging in on Sis. Mia's Bible study!

And I remember the phone calls at various women's conference times and tales of the Holy Ghost doing great things and people being forever changed!

I remember further back than all of that, though! I remember Sis. Tracey coming to a Wednesday night service and finding my wife after service and getting the Holy Ghost after everybody was dismissed!

I remember seeing Sis. Linda Whitley slide in on a Sunday and Bro. Patrick preaching to her and seeing her receive the gift of the Holy Ghost still in the pew!

I remember several years ago, standing beside Bro. David Medina at a special service at Bro. Wallace's church and being shocked to realize that he was receiving the Spirit of God all by himself!

I remember a time before many of you were here, back when Bro. Patrick and Bro. Wallace were still the pastors and Bro. Jason Dillon was preaching here, when I was sitting on the piano and I looked down and realized that Sis. Louise was getting the Holy Ghost that she never dreamed that she could even have!

I remember and will always treasure the day that Jackie and Jemi ran to find me across the youth camp to tell me that Jackie had received the Holy Ghost the night before! And of seeing Jordon get it at a youth camp the year before, and of receiving those reports of your conversion: I remember!

And I call it to your remembrance! We don't have time for everybody's story to be personally mentioned but you need to remember that God has given you the gift of His Spirit and He has called you! Who cares about the past hurts of this life and who cares to bring up again all that has gone wrong? The night that we got the Holy Ghost, everything was going right! And it was a right that far overshadows every bad memory of our life! We choose to stir up in remembrance the times when God's hand first found us!

I've brought up your memories, but let me quickly bring up mine! It was in the seventh week of a nine week revival with Bro. Germany in Oil City, Louisiana. I was nine years old but I had been deeply moved by the Spirit of God and found a place at the altar to pray and repent! As I prayed, I became suddenly aware that I needed to be baptized. I found my mother praying somebody else through to the Holy Ghost and I got her attention and whispered "can we go home and get some clothes so I can be baptized?" And I'll never forget her response, "God spoke to me today, son, and told me to bring some extra clothes for you, I've got them in the car!"

And there were many being baptized that night, but it did not make it any less special. There were several people ahead of me and my best friend was right behind me. When I went down in Jesus' name, I remember the pastor and Bro. Cox's father praying for me and telling me to praise God for His sacrifice on the cross. As I prayed, I remember hearing someone talking in tongues loudly and then I remember realizing that it was me! At the tender age of nine-years-old, God filled me with the Holy Ghost that night! And immediately after me, my best friend was baptized and received the Holy Ghost! And a few people later, Bro. Brandon Cox was baptized and received the Holy Ghost that same night!

There have been a few times in my life, when the devil tried to come in and make me doubt the calling and touch of God on my life. There have been times that he tried to slip a thought that God wasn't real in my mind. But all I've had to do was remember that night that I first received and all of the doubt goes away! And that's what somebody needs to do today! You need to remember the hour that you first believed! You need to remember when you were baptized in the name of Jesus! You need to remember when you received the baptism of the Holy Spirit! And then you need to remind yourself that you are God's possession! And that the devil is a liar! And that there is a call of God upon your life! And you do have hope! And you do have a reason to praise God! And all of this comes from simply taking the time to remember! There is power in remembering!

That's why the scripture said this about those who overcame the devil and made it to heaven:

There is power in remembering the first touches of God in your life, because it erases doubt and lies and every other trick of Satan! When we get to heaven, it will have been because of the "word of our testimony;" the power of remembering!

And I remember also the many extra touches of God for the miraculous! I remember the times that God made a way of escape out of an impossible situation! I remember the touches of God throughout my life that have caused me to grow and have come just in time throughout the years! Some of you can remember such things also. The Bible says:

What a glorious commandment; we obey that commandment tonight! We remember! We invoke the power of remembering! We praise God for the memories of His mighty acts! And we also join with the Psalmist who said:

And let me say this: if you read the first part of the 77th Psalm, you will find that the psalmist was in a bit of trouble and amidst issues of his life. He had been complaining and had sleepless nights. And it was in the midst of these problems, that he decided to "remember the deeds of the Lord!" It was in the midst of his trouble that he said "I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds!" And so a situation that began with trouble ends with deliverance and praise, because in the bad, the writer decided to remember the good things that the Lord had done in the past!

The natural tendency of us, Christian, today is to do the exact opposite of this Psalmist. He was in trouble and chose instead to remember and focus on the good things of the Lord. What we tend to do is while we are in a good time and a mountain top, to remember the down times and the times of past hurts. And thus we do the opposite of this Psalmist in that we -- like Pharaoh's dream of old -- let the ugly and the poor years eat up the blessings of God! And we do all of this by our choice of what we remember! By choosing to focus and remember the negative!

Whether it has been a good week or a bad week; a good year or a bad year; a good life or a bad life, why don't you do what the psalmist did and in the midst of whatever you are going through, choose instead to remember the Lord's work and the good things that He has done in the past!? If you do, then you will discover that good things and deliverance come out of every situation if you choose to remember the goodness of what the Lord has done! We choose to remember the wondrous works of God in our life tonight, despite whatever may be going on right now in our life! Such is the power of remembrance! Such is the power of remembering the good! We do so tonight and obey the Lord's command!

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And so we have obeyed the command of the Lord to remember His good deeds that He has performed in our own lifetimes. We have remembered the day that we were enflamed with His Spirit. We have remembered when we first met Him! But we are not yet through, because there is no greater command of remembrance than that of the words of Jesus Christ at the Last Supper. On the night that Jesus was betrayed and arrested, He first ate with His disciples and during the Passover meal He took of the bread and began to break it and said that it represented His body that would be broken at Calvary for our sins. And then taking the cup with the "fruit of the vine," He commanded them to drink of it and that it was in remembrance of His blood that would be offered on a Roman cross the next day to pay the price of salvation for us. At both offerings, Jesus said "this do in remembrance of me!" And later, "as often as you do this, do it in remembrance of me!"

We must pause and say how that among many religions, the obedience of this passage of scripture has become grossly distorted and convoluted. Some churches have taken the simple act of remembrance and turned it into an intricate exercise in ceremony and pomp. Some have elevated it to the very act of salvation itself, something that the scriptures do not subscribe to it. In our text, Paul warned of the dangers of taking the Lord's Supper with "unrepented sin" in your heart and without first "searching yourself." He also warned of taking the Lord's Supper without "discerning the Lord's body." In other words, the point is to remember Calvary and the cost of it and what Jesus Christ has done for us and if communion is taken frivolously, and just out of habit, it loses the power to bless and instead becomes a curse to those who take it. And yet because of the ritualistic mode of many religions, many people today take of the Lord's Supper casually, without even giving any attention to the spiritual condition of their heart and without ever really significantly discerning the reason that it was instituted in the first place. In short, the sins of people with regard to communion can be summed up by saying that they "no longer take it in remembrance of Him." And here is the reason why: you cannot remember what you have never experienced. Churches today are full of people who have heard the story of the cross, but never actually been to Calvary. Therefore it is impossible for them to take communion in remembrance of something that they have never experienced!

There is a difference in hearing and believing the story of Calvary and having gone there. I am not speaking of a physical trip where you travel to the airport of modern day Jerusalem and take a taxi or a shuttle to the outskirts of the old city and go to a Catholic shrine there. I have never set foot on Israeli soil, but I have been to Calvary. And going does not require a plane ticket and a visa, but rather a repentant heart and a comprehending spirit.

I have heard the story of Calvary all of my life, but it was that night of nine-years-of-age, that I first visited it personally. In body, I went no further than the altar area of a church and a baptistery, but in Spirit I made it to the foot of the cross. Because it was that day that I first truly realized that my sins had separated me from God and that without the blood of Jesus that was shed on the cross, I would have no chance at eternal life. And it was also that day that I first appreciated that I deserved death and yet He had -- through great sacrifice -- given me a chance to find forgiveness and become a joint-heir of everything that He had! And I realized that more than anything, I needed to do something about His sacrifice. I needed to apply His blood to my life in the waters of baptism. I needed to ask His forgiveness at an altar of repentance. I needed His resurrection Spirit of power to live within me. I needed to surrender my will to His will. There, in a country church on a Thursday night almost twenty years ago, I visited Calvary for the first time.

You can tell if you have truly been to Calvary, because you leave forever changed. There is no "life as normal" after a visit to that hallowed place. But your life and its meaning is forever altered by having been so close to such a great sacrifice. If you are having to ask yourself "have I been to Calvary?" then you haven't, because once you have been there, the impact on your life is unmistakable.

And let me throw this in here: 2 Peter 2:20 says that if someone has tasted of the power of God's Spirit and been set free from their sin, and yet goes back out into the world and becomes entangled in a lifestyle of sin again, that their end is worse off than their beginning. You know why? Because now they are trying to live in sin, yet with the memory of what it was like to live for God and with the memory of His Spirit working in their lives! The power of remembering is that they are miserable and have to go further into sin in order to drown out those wonderful memories of God's moving in their life. The devil is lying to them trying to tell them that they have everything that they want and yet those memories of God moving through them are testifying that the devil is a liar! Once you've made the trip to Calvary the first time, then it is impossible to live life as if it had never happened! Because of the power in remembering!

I have been back to Calvary a few more times for another visit since that day of my childhood. My second trip to Calvary was in a prayer room in college. In studying the life of Christ and His crucifixion, it hit me hard what great agony and suffering that He went through and there in a moment of prayer, I could hear the cries of suffering. I could see Him hanging there and almost feel what He felt as those who passed by mockingly and jeeringly called His name. And then it hit me that if I had been the only one on earth, He still would have endured such an ordeal! That's how great His love for me was and is! Yes, I cherish that trip to this day!

And several times here in Castroville, I have made the journey again. It has been at odd moments. Once was when I was preparing a mid week Bible Study on the cross a few years ago, that I found myself sitting in my office at the foot of the cross. I remember it vividly. Another time was in a Bible Study where a man for the first time made the trip. I made the trip with him. He stayed after Bible Study that night late to talk about how he had never really grasped the point of the cross before, and with tears in his eyes, he said, "God loves us a bunch, doesn't he!?" I knew what he meant. It's one thing to be told such a thing by a teacher, but it is another to grasp that revelation for yourself. That's the difference between just knowing the story and having made the trip. He had sat in churches all of his life and yet as an older man, made the trip for the first time!

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As our other text, we read an odd scripture from the life of David's most rebellious son, Absalom. There is nothing in Absalom's life from which we would draw a righteous example and nothing that we would care to emulate. He was full of pride, rebellion, and greed and as such met an untimely death as judgment from God.

Another curse from God was that Absalom had no sons to carry on his name. And so in our text, we read an interesting event that Absalom performed right before he died:

Because he had no sons born after him, he set up a statue or a monument called "Absalom's monument." My question to you is "who of you has heard about and before I mentioned it, remembered Absalom's monument?" Most of you, this is the first time you have heard about it, isn't it? But all of you have heard of another one of David's sons, Solomon, because you are familiar with one of his distant sons, namely Jesus Christ! The point is that for someone who has died to truly be remembered, then a monument or statue will not do, but rather there must be sons to carry the memory with them!

When we go to Calvary and bow at the cross and apply His blood to our lives and receive His Spirit, the scriptures say that we become "sons of God!" And as such, we become the ones who are able to keep Jesus Christ's death in constant remembrance. Being born again as His sons is the most effective way to do this. Some religions do not emphasize being born again into the kingdom of God and so the Lord's Supper has become a traditional statute and historical monument just like Absalom's. There is no more Spirit present and no more of God there when they partake of the Lord's Supper than in a museum. But we, who are His sons and daughters, cannot make the same mistake! Because we are not just remembering a story, but we are remembering an event which we have visited personally. We are not just remembering a good man, but a God who has birthed us and changed us and who is actively involved in our life from day to day! We are not just fulfilling a tradition of the "church" or a ceremonial ritual tonight, but rather we do away with all of the trappings and inventions of men and simply take the Lord's supper for the purpose of remembering His sacrifice! And we can truly remember, because we have been there!

And so we will take of the Lord's supper with proper reverence. We will first search ourselves and we will ask God to cleanse us of all our sin. We will take it in a guarded and cautious manner because we remember that even at the original offering, there was one who partook who betrayed Jesus that very night. We will therefore not view it as something that "locks us into the kingdom of God" but as a reminder of our entrance into the kingdom and as a commitment that we will remain! But our main goal and aim in taking the Lord's Supper is to stir up by the powers of remembrance and bring our minds back to the first visit of Calvary in our lives. To walk once again in that awe. To remind ourselves that as sons and daughters of Him, this is no ritual but rather the active duty of reminding ourselves of the power of His death and resurrection until He comes back for us!

If you are not right with God before this communion, this communion will not solve that for you. You must take your own trip to Calvary to find salvation. But the power of what we are about to do lies in the remembering! We give Him honor and glory in our thoughts as we obey His command to take of this communion. We allow it to take us back to the first time that we feasted of His goodness and mercy and grace. And we allow it to renew within us the passion and the flame that began burning bright in our lives. And we give Him praise for it!

We are coming back to our first love, tonight by bringing our hearts and minds back to Calvary! Such is the power of taking the Lord's Supper, as His sons and daughters we through it show His death until He comes again! And by bringing His great sacrificial work back to the forefront of our memories, we give Him glory and honor and recommit ourselves to loving Him with everything in us! The power of the Lord's Supper is found within the power in remembering!