Forget Not

 “…and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭6‬:‭11‬-‭12‬ ‭ESV‬‬

We often hear how people struggle with their faith in times of hardship. We hear how they lose faith in times of sorrow. And this indeed happens.

As people are diagnosed with a serious medical condition, they can begin to question God. As people lose loved ones, they can struggle with their faith. And as they suffer a job loss and struggle financially, they can begin to doubt.

The opposite, however, is also very common. What I mean is that people often lose faith when times are good. They often turn from the Lord when things are in their favor.

This reality is brought out in the above passage. Looking at the immediate context, Moses had just shared with the people who God is. And he told them that they were to hold fast to his Word. They were to be guided by it in every aspect of life, and they were to teach it diligently to their children, lest it be forgotten.

He then reminded them how the Lord was bringing them into the land of promise. He was bringing them into a land where everything was provided for them. He’d provided for them cities that they did not build and cisterns that they did not dig.

These blessings, in other words, were not things they would provide for themselves. They would not be attained by their hard work. Nor would they be produced by their own effort. 

They were being given to them freely by God, as promised to their forefathers. They, in other words, were being graciously provided to them. They were undeserved blessings, freely given to them by God.

He then, however, went on to warn them. As they enjoyed these blessings, they were not to forget the Lord. And this implies that forgetting the Lord was a very real danger. 

This, then, is a warning we also need. After all, we too are recipients of God's salvation. And we too are recipients of blessings we do not deserve and cannot produce on our own.

As we enjoy these blessings, we must not forget the Lord. We must not forget the Lord who saved us. And we must hold fast to his Word.

We must continue to look in faith to the giver of these blessings. We must look to him in a spirit of thanksgiving, acknowledging our dependence upon him. We must look to him with an ongoing trust as we continually experience needs of various kinds.