Memorial Stones
My mom spent the final years of her life living with dementia. Dementia does more than affect memory. It rearranges relationships. It takes away shared history. There were moments near the end where I would look into my mom’s eyes and she did not know who I was. She did not recognize my face. She did not remember my name.
I would sit there thinking, I am your son. We have stories. We have memories. I was determined she could remember if I just reminded her enough. I scrolled through childhood photos with her, and I showed her family photos of my children, but she did not recognize anyone. Her memories of my girls and me were gone – and because she could not remember who I was, there was no love, affection, concern, or bond. When I said goodbye to her and told her I loved her, she said, “Okay.”
When you think about it, memories are extraordinarily powerful. Memories tell us who we have loved and how we got here. Memories tell us where we parked at the grocery store. Memory tells us who we married.
One of the greatest dangers for followers of Jesus is not rebellion…it is forgetting. During our Leadership Series, we talked about Moses and mentioned how he led the Israelites out of Egypt, how God parted the waters of the Red Sea so the Israelites could cross safely and quickly to the other side. Now, 40 years later, Joshua is leading the Israelites. Moses and an entire generation of Israelites died without seeing the promised land.
But now, all they had to do was cross the Jordan River to be at the edge of the Promised Land. Forty years of wandering were almost over…But the Jordan River was at flood stage, swollen, fast-moving, and impassable. There was no enemy chasing them.
There was nothing dangerous behind them. The danger was in front of them. If they wanted to reach the Promised Land, they would have to cross the dangerous Jordan River.
God brought them to this exact place, at this exact time, knowing that the only way they could move forward into the Promised Land would be if God once again parted the waters and worked a miracle. So God did. He parted the waters and the Israelites crossed. Let’s read in Joshua about the importance of remembering when God moved in our lives.
Joshua 4:1-9 (NLT2)
When all the people had crossed the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, 2 “Now choose twelve men, one from each tribe. 3 Tell them, ‘Take twelve stones from the very place where the priests are standing in the middle of the Jordan. Carry them out and pile them up at the place where you will camp tonight.’” 4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had chosen—one from each of the tribes of Israel. 5 He told them, “Go into the middle of the Jordan, in front of the Ark of the LORD your God. Each of you must pick up one stone and carry it out on your shoulder—twelve stones in all, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. 6 We will use these stones to build a memorial. In the future your children will ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ 7 Then you can tell them, ‘They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the LORD’s Covenant went across.’ These stones will stand as a memorial among the people of Israel forever.” 8 So the men did as Joshua had commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan River, one for each tribe, just as the LORD had told Joshua. They carried them to the place where they camped for the night and constructed the memorial there. 9 Joshua also set up another pile of twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan, at the place where the priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant were standing. And they are there to this day.
Immediately after God works this amazing miracle of parting the water of the Jordan River and getting the Israelites safely to the other side. God does not tell Joshua to organize the people or claim land. The first thing the Lord tells him to do is to remember.
You would think that would not be a problem! The Israelites stood with their feet on the bank of the river and watched God stop the raging river. Two walls of water formed, dry ground emerged, and the Israelites got to cross through their own private Aquarium! Yet – the Israelites often forgot the work of God in their lives. And the truth is…so do we.
So often we pray for God to move, bring healing, restore relationships, and rescue…and he does…and we forget all about what he did. So, that brings me to the first point. When it comes to following Jesus…
Memories matter
As my mom’s memory disappeared, my relationship disappeared with it. When she could not remember who I was, she could no longer relate to me as her son. I was simply a stranger who insisted she was my mom.
Many of us have been forgotten by someone we love, and even when we understand the reason, it still hurts. When you are no longer even a simple memory to someone who once knew you deeply, it creates an unsettled emptiness in our hearts.
That is why memories of how the Lord has moved in your life matter so much. You ask the Lord to move, to rescue a loved one from addiction, and He does. You ask the Lord to provide a job, and He does. You ask the Lord for healing from cancer, and doctors are baffled when the mass disappears. And then…far too quickly, we move on, and we forget what God has done.
When we forget what God has done, we lose confidence when the next challenge shows up. And our conviction that God will move turns into fear that he won’t, not because God changed, but because our memory faded. God wants us to remember HIS work…because…
What God did then fuels courage now
I love the story of Caleb. Caleb was one of the Israelites rescued from Egypt. At eighty-five years old, Caleb was willing to fight for the land God promised him, not because he was reckless, not because he was stubborn, but because he remembered.
Joshua 14:10-12 (NLT2)
“Now, as you can see, the LORD has kept me alive and well as he promised for all these forty-five years since Moses made this promise—even while Israel wandered in the wilderness. Today I am eighty-five years old. 11 I am as strong now as I was when Moses sent me on that journey, and I can still travel and fight as well as I could then. 12 So give me the hill country that the LORD promised me. You will remember that as scouts we found the descendants of Anak living there in great, walled towns. But if the LORD is with me, I will drive them out of the land, just as the LORD said.”
Caleb remembered Egypt. He remembered the Red Sea. He remembered the wilderness. He remembered God keeping His word for forty-five years. Caleb’s courage grew out of memory. He trusted God for what was ahead because he had a lifetime of evidence behind him.
That is why we need to remember and savor what God has already done in our lives. Remembering fuels obedience when the next challenge looms in front of us.
Untold stories fail the next generation
In Joshua 4:6-7, God says that because of the stones, one day their children will ask, “What do these stones mean?” The stones were meant to remind the next generation that God made a way when there was no other path forward.
Parents and grandparents, the next generation needs to hear how God has worked in your life. They need to hear how you met. They need to hear about prayers that were answered after loss, after miscarriage, after waiting longer than you ever expected. They need to hear how you surrendered your life to Jesus, not when everything was figured out, but when you finally admitted you needed Him. They need to hear how God provided jobs. They need to hear how relationships were restored when they seemed beyond repair. They need to hear how addiction lost its grip and recovery was embraced. They need to hear how God showed up when you had no backup plan.
If they do not hear your stories of how God moved in your life, they will assume God is distant, abstract, or only active in the Bible. So, I double-dog dare you to start talking and tell others what God has done. Take them down to a creek-bed and pick up some rocks or stones, use a sharpie, and write a word or two on that stone to serve as a reminder for the next generation about how God moved in your life.
And that is why I love to talk about how God is moving here at Beach Church! I love to BOAST about how God is moving. And the cool thing about boasting in the Lord is that it is biblical.
When Saul and Barnabas returned on their mission trip, they gave a report about the work the Lord was doing among the churches:
Acts 14:27 (NLT2)
Upon arriving in Antioch, they called the church together and reported everything God had done through them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles, too.
In 2025, God did some pretty amazing things at Beach Church!
We welcomed over 2100 guests to our worship services.
We gave away 1508 Bibles.
We retired our mortgage three years early.
This fall, our kids ministry grew to an average of 206, a 46% increase over 2024.
This fall, our weekend attendance grew to an average of 2,372 people, a 37% increase over 2024.
We baptized 294 new followers of Jesus.
We launched a Saturday night service.
Through our Food Distribution, we have fed over 10,000 people in the Grand Strand.
For Operation Christmas Child, we gave over 1000 shoeboxes.
We sent two mission teams to Mexico and installed 20 stoves for the Mayan people.
We raised over $80,000 for the Christmas Offering to expand our missions ministry to Africa, the Philippines, and continue in Mayan Missions, and resurface the parking lot.
According to Outreach Magazine, we became the 44th fastest-growing church in America.
These are memories of how GOD moved through us in 2025… And if we do not celebrate and remember them, we will forget them faster than we think.
So, let’s celebrate!