I have the memory of a goldfish. I am the most forgetful person on earth--well, unless I cannot remember someone with a worse memory. My daughter, Hope, has an incredible memory, and she is a tremendous orator. She loves to ask deep questions and reminisce of times past. Often she will ask me questions of her childhood, like her first words or when she lost this or did that. I'm so forgetful, and I struggle to recall these memories. I often grieve my forgetfulness. I am also prone to forget how God has delivered me, and I am not quick to remember the many ways that He has provided in my family's life or ministry. Deuteronomy 8:11 reads, "Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today." In this verse, one can observe that remembering God is directly tied to keeping His directives. Obedience is directly connected to remembering Him.
In Deuteronomy 7:1-6, God cited implications for taking the Promised Land. He assured the Israelites that He would give their enemies over to them and defeat their foes. But forgetting God caused them to doubt Him and cower in fear. They sent spies into the Promised Land to conduct a feasibility study instead of a siege (Numbers 13:1-2). The people failed to remember their wedding vows to the God who rescued them from Egypt's slavery (Deuteronomy 6:12). The Israelites were not strangers to forgetting God. While Moses was on Mt. Sinai hearing from God face to face, the people forgot God and made a golden calf to worship. This idolatrous act carried stiff disciplinary actions from God (Exodus 32:1-6). Israel's complaining about food provisions in the wilderness was another example of forgetting God their provider (Deut. 8:16). Later, Moses sternly indicted the children of Israel for forgetting God: "You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth" (Deut. 32:18). There are terrible consequences for forgetting Yahweh, the one true God: "you shall surely perish" (Deut. 8:19). The book of Judges articulates 400 years of forgetting God and the demise that ensued.
Forgetting God is a dangerous step for the Christian. Deuteronomy 4:9 calls for diligent obedience and cautions against forgetting what our "eyes have seen". Whenever I doubt God, cower in fear, or get anxious, I forget what my eyes have seen. I forget by ignoring God's Word or faithfulness, and this is detrimental to my faith. When I forget God's essence and how He has provided for me, my hope in Him is sure to crumble. When I do not remember God, I fail to trust Him, even in the simplest of daily choices. I also believe that forgetting God leads to anxiety and weighs down the countenance (Proverbs 12:25).
I pray every day that the Lord will help me remember His track record of faithfulness. I ask Him to bring to mind the things that He has done; this increases my faith and helps me look for and worship Him in every situation. I recommend daily journaling a few thoughts that God shows you in your time in the Word. The Christ-follower is to love God in everything, thus remembering Him and displaying obedience and full surrender (Matthew 22:37-39; John 10:27). Christians are to love God with all they have; their love for God is the priority of their lives. This mandate calls for a life of obedience accompanied by good works (Ephesians 2:10).
God created humanity to glorify Him, and remembering Him is one's primary means of compliance to His will (Isaiah 43:7).
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