Remembering God's Goodness This Thanksgiving Seasonနမူနာ

The Bible contains many admonitions to remember God, including what He’s taught us and done for us. Through remembrance, we hold on to what we’ve learned in the past and live in light of it in the present. But the Bible also warns us not to forget. Forgetfulness casts aside everything we’ve seen and learned about God.

Forgetting God is no small matter. The Bible links forgetting with ingratitude as a root problem in idolatry. Throughout the Bible, grateful remembering is to worship what ungrateful forgetting is to idolatry.

When we neglect God’s role in our life, we fill His spot with something else–the throne of power and worship in our heart never stays vacant long. Having forgotten God’s goodness and sin’s bitter bite, we wander toward the same traps we vowed to avoid.

Scripture also draws on the themes of remembering and forgetting to surface lessons we must not ignore. If you want one book to see this emphasis, go to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy comes at the end of Moses’ ministry. Israel eagerly awaits to enter the promised land. Poised to take this long-anticipated step, Deuteronomy offers a crash course on their history and God’s commands. It reviews what Israel should have seen and learned.

God knows how quickly they forget, so he tells them in advance what they need to remember. Throughout chapter 8 the Israelites are told to remember that it was God alone led them and provided for them, and they’re forewarned not to forget this. But once Israel possessed the things they wanted, they put God back on the shelf. Where they should have gratefully kept alive the memories of God’s work, they moved on and expressed their ingratitude.

When we read about Israel or the disciples, it’s easy to shake our heads about how fast they get off course. One minute God rescues Israel from slavery, and the next minute they ask to go back. In one conversation Jesus tells the disciples he came to lay down his life, and before long those disciples argue over which of them will be the greatest.

I’m not that different. God teaches me something in the morning and I’ve dismissed it by mid-afternoon. God answers a direct prayer that boosts my faith, and one week later I’m doubting if He ever answers prayer. What I’m thankful for one month, I’m grumbling about the next. Whether it’s done willfully or in ignorance, forgetting God sets aside what we’ve learned. The result is we have to learn it again, often in more difficult or painful ways. But take heart! Remembering is a friend that saves us from unnecessary trouble.