Remembered

To discover all the other exciting events happening in Adventist Heritage month, visit the Adventist Heritage website.

Elizabeth Ostring is a retired musculoskeletal and family physician. Currently adjunct research officer for Avondale University, pastor for Hope Channel New Zealand Bible School, and head elder of Royal Oak Seventh-day Adventist Church, Auckland, New Zealand. 

What is Adventist Heritage Daily Devotional?

Imagine a thriving Adventist movement in the South Pacific. Do images or stories come quickly to mind? This podcast recounts important events, stories and memories from Adventists throughout the South Pacific. These mission stories from our past are proof that the Adventist movement is alive and thriving. Listen to these podcasts and step out to join these pioneering Adventists with Jesus on His mission of making disciple-makers in the South Pacific.

The Adventist church is built on God’s people remembering—remembering the Sabbath, remembering Jesus is coming again. But best of all are the promises that God himself remembers. God remembered Noah (Genesis 8:1). God remembered Abraham (Genesis 19:29). God remembered Rachel (Genesis 30:22). Jesus promised to remember the thief nailed to the cross beside Him (Luke 23:42-43). But what I love the most is what God says He will not remember. When He writes His laws on our hearts, He will remember our sins no more (Jeremiah 31:33-34).

God remembered my agnostic father, and when he was stationed in Fiji during World War II sent a young man to sing the Lord’s Prayer. Dad’s heart was softened. Then God impressed Daphne (nee Wishart) Townend to send him a personal message to begin Bible studies. Dad responded to her invitation and accepted the Adventist message, which he enthusiastically shared with me as I grew up. God remembered a young woman in a small town in northern Finland and sent Ragnar Svensson to her mother who lived many miles away. Pastor Svensson answered questions that had bothered Anna Lall for years, and she enthusiastically shared the Adventist heritage message with her daughter. Thus Tyra Östring learned the great Advent message. Despite terrible war time deprivations, Tyra remained committed to God, and I have shared her amazing story in the book Tyra––Through Blood, Sweat and Tears. Perhaps you can say that God remembered me, because, although we were born literally on the opposite sides of the world, Tyra’s son became my husband and together we served as medical missionaries in Hong Kong and New Zealand. And now our children serve God.

Sometimes it feels as though God has forgotten us, that the great prophecies of our Adventist heritage are not being fulfilled as we expected. But God never forgets. As the children of Israel groaned under servitude in Egypt, God remembered the covenant he had made centuries before with their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and right on time they were delivered.

Verse of the Day
“And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” Exodus 2:24.