Forget-Me-Not — Adam’s Angle

You remember when the doc gave you the bad news: your cholesterol was off the charts. The good news was that if you followed a diet and workout schedule you should be able to reign it in.

You did so, and now your cholesterol is better. To celebrate, you head off to the local greasy spoon to get a double-Mc Bucket with a deep-fried apple pie for dessert.

Sound familiar?

When the chips are down, we do everything we can to walk the line. But when things are good, we get slack. For some of us, that can be the way we deal with our health. Sadly, for some of us, that’s the way we treat our walk with God.

When we’re going through rough times, it’s easy to run to God in prayer, to pour over our Bibles and to quickly obey His voice. But in the good times we can go for days and “forget” to have a quiet time with God, or second guess God’s way of doing things.

What you learned the hard way, don’t forget on easy street: you need to obey and honor God every day of your life.

Don’t Forget the Bread!

Toward the end of Moses’ life, things were looking up for the nation of Israel. The Jews were finishing their 40-years of wandering in the wilderness and were poised to enter the land flowing with milk and honey.

Undoubtedly, the crowds would have been itching to enter a time of blessing. But before they did, Moses (spoilsport that he was) had a few things to say. His short little speech of more than 30 chapters is what we know as the book of Deuteronomy. He wasn’t just some fuddy-duddy parent lecturing a teen before handing over the keys to the family car. He was giving them a warning that would keep them on the right track as they entered a place of blessing: don’t forget the bread.

The bread that Moses reminded them of was the manna that God provided in the wilderness: “Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna . . . to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:2-3).

What was manna all about? It was a 40-year-long object lesson about obedience. Look back at Exodus chapter16. God told the Jews what to do with the manna: when to gather it, when to gather a double portion, when not to look for it and when not to keep it. Those who did what God commanded ate. Those who disregarded God’s directions went without or had smelly leftovers filled with maggots.

If you had that same lesson every day for 40 years the message might get through your thick skull: “Hey, when I do what God says, I’m sustained. When I do things my way, I suffer.” But, how quick we are to forget such simple lessons when things are going well.

Got Milk & Honey?

Moses knew his people were about to enter a time of blessing, but he was wise enough to warn them about the danger of prosperity: “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when … all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Deuteronomy 8:10-14).

The danger of the good times is that we might be tempted to give ourselves credit for the good God has brought our way: “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17-18).

And when we give ourselves credit for the good in our lives, we begin to think that we know better than God. That leads to trouble.

Moses warned the Jews about the danger of going their own way, abandoning the true God to follow other gods: “If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the LORD destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 8:19-20).

Eve of Destruction

It’s easy enough to talk about destruction when we’re talking about someone else far, far away. But we don’t think it pertains to us. Sure, the Jews got sent into exile. But nothing bad could ever happen to us — or so we think.

The truth is that when we walk in times of blessing, we tend to get slack in obeying God. We bend the rules and figure, “What does it matter?” It matters a whole lot.

God’s words to us in the Bible may be from old, but they’re not old school. They’re timeless, and given to us so that things may go well for us. Obeying God and honoring Him never go out of season.

— Adam Pivec
1/31/08