“Search backward into all the performances of Providence throughout your life. So did Asaph: ‘I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old. I will meditate also of all your work, and talk of your doings’ (Psalm 77:11, 12). He labored to recover and revive the ancient providences of God’s mercies many years past, and suck a fresh sweetness out of them by new reviews of them. Ah, sirs, let me tell you, there is not such a pleasant history for you to read in all the world as the history of your own life, if you would but sit down and record from the beginning until the present what God has been to you, and done for you; what signal manifestations and outbreakings of His mercy, faithfulness and love there have been in all the conditions you have passed through. If your hearts do not melt before you have gone half through that history, they are hard hearts indeed. ‘My Father, you are the guide of my youth’ (Jeremiah 3:4).”
—John Flavel, The Mystery of Providence, chapter 9.)