21 Bible Verses About Memories

Psalm 77:11

“I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.”

Reflection: The psalm opens in distress, and memory at first makes it worse: “I remembered you, God, and I groaned” (verse 3). Verses 7-9 ask whether the Lord will “reject forever” and whether God has “forgotten to be merciful.” The turn in verse 10 is a choice of what to remember, “the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand,” and verse 15 names the deed recalled: “With your mighty arm you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.”

Lamentations 3:21-23

“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

Reflection: The two verses before these remember the other side: “I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.” The writer then calls something else to mind and says hope comes from it. Verse 24 finishes the thought: “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”

Psalm 103:2

“Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits.”

Reflection: The psalmist speaks to his own soul and gives it a list so it will not forget. Verses 3-5 name the benefits one by one: God “forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,” “redeems your life from the pit,” crowns it “with love and compassion,” and satisfies it “with good things.”

Isaiah 46:9

“Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.”

Reflection: Isaiah 46 opens with the gods Bel and Nebo loaded onto beasts of burden, idols that have to be carried. God answers that he has carried Israel “since your birth” and will do so “even to your old age and gray hairs” (verses 3-4). The command to remember is addressed to “you rebels” (verse 8), and verse 10 gives what the former things show: “I make known the end from the beginning.” Isaiah 43:18 uses the same phrase differently. There “Forget the former things” follows a description of God as the one who “made a way through the sea” and “drew out the chariots and horses” (verses 16-17), and the new thing that replaces them is “a way in the wilderness” (verse 19). In Isaiah 46 the former things are kept in mind as evidence that God foretells and acts.

Deuteronomy 8:2

“Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.”

Reflection: Moses speaks to Israel before it enters the land, and asks it to remember the whole forty years in the wilderness, not only the rescue at the start. The next verse gives the lesson of the hunger and the manna: “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” Verse 5 names the years for what they were: “as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.”

Deuteronomy 5:15

“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”

Reflection: This is the reason given for the Sabbath when Moses repeats the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 20:8-11 the command begins “Remember the Sabbath day” and rests on creation: “in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth.” Here the reason is Israel’s own slavery, and the verse before it extends the rest to “your male and female servants,” so that they “may rest, as you do.”

Ephesians 2:11-13

“Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called ‘uncircumcised’ by those who call themselves ‘the circumcision’ (which is done in the body by human hands)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

Reflection: Paul writes to Gentile believers and asks them to remember what they were: “separate from Christ,” outside Israel and “without hope and without God in the world.” The memory is set against verse 13: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” The verb in “remember” is mnemoneuo, the same verb that stands behind the NIV’s “Consider” in Revelation 2:5.

Exodus 13:3

“Then Moses said to the people, ‘Commemorate this day, the day you came out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, because the LORD brought you out of it with a mighty hand.’”

Reflection: Moses gives this command on the day Israel leaves Egypt. The chapter turns the memory into a yearly practice: seven days of bread without yeast, a festival on the seventh (verses 6-7), and a sentence for parents to say: “On that day tell your son, ‘I do this because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt’” (verse 8). Verse 9 calls the observance “a reminder on your forehead,” using the noun zikkaron.

Joshua 4:6-7

“In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”

Reflection: After Israel crosses the Jordan, twelve men, one from each tribe, carry a stone each from the riverbed where the priests stood with the ark. The stones are built to raise a question, “What do these stones mean?”, and the answer is given in advance for parents to tell their children. Verse 20 says Joshua set them up at Gilgal, and verse 24 gives a wider purpose: “so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful.”

1 Corinthians 11:24-25

“And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’”

Reflection: Paul says he “received from the Lord” what he passed on to the church in Corinth (verse 23), and verse 26 adds that eating the bread and drinking the cup “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” The word for remembrance is anamnesis, and churches understand the remembrance at the Lord’s Supper differently. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1363) says that in Scripture a memorial “is not merely the recollection of past events” and that in the liturgy those events “become in a certain way present and real.” The Baptist Faith and Message (2000) calls the Lord’s Supper a symbolic act by which church members “memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.”

Luke 24:6-8

“‘He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’’ Then they remembered his words.”

Reflection: The women come to the tomb early on the first day of the week with spices for a body and find it gone. The two men in gleaming clothes send them back to what Jesus had said in Galilee. “Then they remembered his words,” and verse 9 says they went and told the Eleven.

2 Timothy 2:8

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel.”

Reflection: Paul writes as a prisoner, “chained like a criminal” (verse 9), after everyone in the province of Asia has deserted him (1:15). The thing he asks Timothy to remember is a person, named by two facts: raised from the dead and descended from David. Verse 9 ends with the contrast between Paul and his message: “But God’s word is not chained.”

Revelation 2:5

“Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.”

Reflection: The risen Jesus writes to the church in Ephesus, which he commends for hard work and for testing false apostles (verses 2-3). His complaint is in verse 4: “You have forsaken the love you had at first.” The NIV’s “Consider” translates mnemoneuo, the ordinary Greek verb for remember, so the order is remember, repent, and do the first works again, with a warning attached: “I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.”

Ezekiel 16:61

“Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you receive your sisters, both those who are older than you and those who are younger. I will give them to you as daughters, but not on the basis of my covenant with you.”

Reflection: Ezekiel 16 is addressed to Jerusalem and confronts her “with her detestable practices” (verse 2). God’s memory comes first: “I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth” (verse 60). Jerusalem’s memory of her own ways follows, and verse 63 places the shame after forgiveness, “when I make atonement for you for all you have done.”

2 Peter 1:9

“But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.”

Reflection: The “them” are the qualities listed in verses 5-7, from goodness and knowledge through to mutual affection and love. A believer without them has forgotten something specific: that they “have been cleansed from their past sins.” Verse 12 treats reminding as ongoing work even for settled believers: “I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have.”

Philippians 3:13-14

“But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Reflection: What lies behind, as the chapter lists it, includes Paul’s standing, “circumcised on the eighth day,” “a Pharisee,” faultless in “righteousness based on the law,” and also his record of “persecuting the church” (verses 5-6). He counts all of it “loss for the sake of Christ” (verse 7). The forgetting belongs to a runner who says in verse 12 that he has not “already arrived at my goal.”

Luke 1:72-73

“…to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham.”

Reflection: Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, speaks these words when his voice returns at his son’s naming and he is “filled with the Holy Spirit” (verse 67). God’s remembering of the covenant with Abraham is followed at once by what it brings: “to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days” (verses 74-75).

Psalm 25:7

“Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you, LORD, are good.”

Reflection: Three requests about God’s memory sit in two verses. Verse 6 asks him to remember “your great mercy and love, for they are from of old”; verse 7 asks him not to remember “the sins of my youth” and to remember the psalmist himself. The ground of each request is God’s character, “according to your love” and “for you, LORD, are good.”

Isaiah 43:25

“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.”

Reflection: The verses before this one are an accusation: Israel has not called on God or brought him offerings, but has “burdened me with your sins and wearied me with your offenses” (verse 24). The promise that follows gives no reason on Israel’s side. God blots out transgressions “for my own sake.”

Jeremiah 31:34

“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Reflection: This is the last line of the new covenant promise, in which God says he will “put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts” (verse 33). Forgiveness and not remembering are stated together as one promise. Hebrews 8:8-12 quotes the whole passage and ends on the same line.

Isaiah 65:17

“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.”

Reflection: The verse before says that “the past troubles will be forgotten and hidden from my eyes,” and verse 19 adds that “the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more.” Here forgetting is part of the promise. Revelation 21:1-4 takes up “a new heaven and a new earth” and says “the old order of things has passed away.”