Deuteronomy 8: 11, 14, 19; Deuteronomy 4: 9, 10, 23 ,31; Deuteronomy 7: 18; Nehemiah 4: 14

Johnny Douglas

Go on admit it!! You sometimes forget,.. Not intentionally of course,..!!
But just ditsy Phoebe not remembering stuff!!? Sometimes though it's a bit more...

There was a Russian writer called Alexander Solzhenitsyn who a while back, in the Templeton Address of 1983, said these evocative words which I reckon are still as real two decades plus later:

"I heard a number of older people offer this explanation for the great disasters that had befallen our world: 'Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened'.. If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 100 million people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men have forgotten God.'"

"What is more, if I were called upon to identify the principal trait of the entire 20th century, I would be unable to find anything more precise than to reflect once again on how we have lost touch with our Creator."

We especially observe this theme in the book of Deuteronomy, when Moses serves up the Ten Commandments and what this covenant means, God declares, "Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today" Deut 8: 11. We are cautioned twice more in this chapter about forgetting God, see verses 14 and 19, and elsewhere in Deuteronomy about forgetting His ways and His gracious provision see Deut 4: 9, 23, 31.

The importance of remembering is a central theme throughout the Old Testament, where the verb alone, "remember", is found over 130 times. The word not only conjures the mental process of "being mindful" of something, but also "to trust" and "to hold onto." Not surprisingly, the word is often looking for action from you, God's child!!:
"Remember the LORD your God" Deut 7: 18;
"Remember the day you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb" Deut. 4: 10;
"Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome" Nehemiah 4: 14.

Knowing our God is great and awesome causes us to be people of startling and incredible exploits... Know that the devils No1 tactic is to distract you from this active remembering & focusing on God!! Don't say you haven't been warned!!

To remember God is to hold onto Him and to be mindful of His character.. What makes Him uniquely Him!! Do you want to be waaaaaa0hed by God's invite? Then recall, trace & study all the Bible uses of the word remember and then go do it!

As such, to remember God is to remember His faithfulness-His never changing love and in turn, to surrender ourselves to Him, Not living off yesterday's greatness but doing it all real & fresh today. For just as the past shapes the present, so our remembering God-and yes, our forgetting Him-shapes who we are.