Don’t Forget!

Deuteronomy 6:12 [then] beware, lest you forget the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

God told His people that He has given them power to get wealth, still in Deuteronomy. The forgetting here of course doesn’t mean someone is going to ‘break up’ with God, or unfriend Him.

Here’s what God means when He says don’t forget Him;

You thanking another thing—a golden calf maybe—after He went through the trouble to save you

You prioritizing that child more than Him after you have prayed and waited long for him or her. The child ends up being idolized and God ceases to get as much time accorded to Him before the child came.

You remembering to tithe (sometimes I have been a victim) after budgeting all the lumpsome money you just received by salary or profit. Even if it’s the thought process, what allocation comes first in your brain? Is it going out to throw a long awaited party? Or is it calculating the net amount that belongs to God.

You being attacked by an ailment, and unlike the last time when you fully trusted God’s healing and the disease went, you remember drugs first…

You being told by God that He has given you the land, and then when you reach there, and see the giants, you immediately brush off what He said!

The theme scripture though, came in the context of wealth.

Look at this story;

Luke 14:16-20 Then He said to him, “A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’ But they all with one [accord] began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused.’ Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’

Notice, all the excuses were perfect…but the tellers weren’t lying. One had land (wealth), the other oxen (wealth) and of course, the married one (how possible could it have been if there was no ounce of wealth)

Maybe God means to say that it is harder when wealth comes into the picture, especially the love of money (1 Tim 6:10)… It is like men forgetting the one who gave them wealth, and idolizing the wealth, making it a god, beside the one and only true God!

The love for money is a major topic of discussion throughout God’s word. After warning the Israelites, Jesus encounters a man he asks to sell all he has to follow him. The young man refused…even after boasting about how he’d observed every other given law. Men ended up turning what was once God’s holy temple into a transaction centre…

Even the Pharisees. Yes those who claimed holiness weren’t lovers of God. See here; Now the Pharisees, who were covetous and lovers of money, heard all these things [taken together], and they began to sneer at and ridicule and scoff at Him. (Luke 16:14)

But I am not here to warn or threaten us about the hardness of heart that wealth brings! Just elucidating why God mentioned ‘forgetting Him’ in the context of wealth.

Fortunately, His mercy forecasts our shortcomings, and He says He’d write His law on our hearts. He says ‘do not fear, I will HELP you’ (Isaiah 41:10) He will help you not to forget Him. He helps me remember Him first whenever that lumpsome of cash comes in!

He will help you! His Spirit shall be your guide. His measure was to give us His own Spirit, to reside within each one of us and to bear the burdens … (which the Israelites who forgot him didn’t have)! That’s His great love—instructing us, and yet helping us to implement every instruction! Isn’t He good! O praise Him.

You will not forget Him! He works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure! He works in you to put Him first before any other thing. And in so doing, the commandment you shall have no other god, and the one that says love the Lord God with all your might, with all your strength…are fulfilled, by the very commander of them!

O but God! We won’t forget you! We can’t!

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Psalms 103:2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits:

Ecclesiastes 12:1 Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, Before the difficult days come, And the years draw near when you say, ” I have no pleasure in them”: