Why we forget—and how to remember—God’s unfailing goodness to us

By Dean Collins

How long does it take for you to forget what God has done for you?

What causes us to forget, anyway? For some of my readers, you may quickly answer as I have from time to time, “I’m having a senior moment.“ And we all laugh off our memory issues. But I also have readers under 40 who admit that sometimes they forget. And if you have children or grandchildren, you’ve seen them forget what you asked them to do. We can’t blame all of our forgetfulness on our age.

Actually, forgetfulness can come for many reasons. Missing a meal, experiencing stress, having a thyroid issue, being depressed, experiencing grief, losing sleep, reacting to medications, drinking too little water, and being hyper focused on a task or work—all these can lead to forgetfulness.

Some of these, along with a few convenient excuses, can impact our spiritual forgetfulness, too. The fact is that our memory of God’s wonderful daily faithfulness to us can fade pretty quickly without regular reminders. Maybe that’s why the psalmist calls us to bless God and not forget his benefits. Long before Harvard medical school offered their advice on retaining memory, King David already knew that repeating to ourselves what we already know helps us remember!

New gods

So maybe it was the stress of Moses being on the mountain with God and not visible to the people of Israel that caused them to forget. It wasn’t lack of food or water, because God kept the supplies coming. Maybe the Israelites didn’t often enough repeat to themselves what God had done so far for them. Maybe that caused them to approach Aaron with their request. From our view it seems pretty shallow of God’s people to ask for new gods after the living God had rescued them from the bondage of Egypt.

And maybe they were actually trying to replace Moses and not God. They often complained to Moses as if he were God and was responsible for both the good and for their difficulties. But whatever they were thinking, it didn’t take them long to ask Aaron for what they believed would help. They wanted something to worship, to celebrate, and to help them in the middle of the wilderness.

God’s chosen were willing to give their possessions to create an alternative deity. And they did this after God had already made it explicitly clear that they should have no other Gods before Him. I guess if you forget who saved you, who feeds you, who is in the middle of rescuing you, then you might be tempted to give allegiance to a golden cow.

While Moses was on the mountain receiving from God the details for the next phase of God’s plans for his people, his chosen people at the base of the mountain were making decisions to choose another path and find another provider.

Old promises

It might do all of us some good to take some time and bless the Lord and review all of his provision and all of his promises. Because lately it seems like we people of faith might be drifting backwards, tempted to create some political and material calves as our preferred path forward. It seems pretty clear in Scripture that all of our hope and worship must be focused on Jesus whom Hebrews says is the author and finisher of our faith. If we aren’t careful, we might drift to Jesus for salvation and back to other ideas and other systems for our rescue on this temporary dwelling place.

And make no mistake, we will reap what we sow. Republican dependency is the same as Democratic dependency, and neither party can save us or keep us like Jesus can. No political system, no amount of money, no new technology, no ideology or philosophy can save us from ourselves and from our sins. Only Jesus can do that. Only Jesus is worthy of our worship and only Jesus can provide all of our needs.

Today’s possibilities

It actually doesn’t matter how long it takes us to forget what God has done for us. It doesn’t matter when we discover that our loyalty to Jesus has wavered. What matters is that we repent and turn our faith to Jesus and that we walk in his kingdom ways.

A little bit of idol making isn’t much different than a lot of idol making. Hopefully we can learn something from the mistakes our forefathers made in their wilderness trek that will keep us focused on the hope and assurances we have in Jesus.

Your time with God’s Word
‭‭Exodus‬ ‭32:1-14‬; Psalm‬ ‭103:1-5‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Photo by Ian Wetherill on Unsplash

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