Be Careful You Do Not Forget

Read

Deuteronomy 8:10-14 "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 you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and 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."

Think

A few years ago I was in the Florida Keys for a fishing tournament. If you have ever driven down US 1, you know what it is like. One long ribbon of road stitching together tiny islands, water stretching out in every direction, the kind of drive that makes you forget the rest of the world exists. I was behind the wheel, windows down, doing what every other driver on that road was doing. Moving. Getting from one spot to the next. And then I noticed something on the side of the highway that made me pull over.

It was a monument. Not a huge one. Not the kind of thing that stops traffic. But when I walked up and read the plaque, the story it told was staggering. Hundreds of World War I veterans had been stationed in the Keys during the 1930s, working on a railroad project. A massive hurricane swept through and killed them. Hundreds of men, wiped out in a single storm. And here was this memorial, right there on the roadside, marking one of the deadliest disasters in American history. Cars were flying past at sixty miles an hour. Nobody was stopping. Nobody was reading the plaque. Nobody seemed to know it was there.

I stood there for a while, just looking at it. And I thought about how easy it is to drive right past the things we are supposed to remember. We get moving. We get busy. We have places to go, fish to catch, meetings to make. And the memorials, the markers, the things that are supposed to remind us where we have been and what it cost, they just blur into the scenery.

That is exactly what Moses is warning Israel about in Deuteronomy 8. He knows what is about to happen. They are going to cross the Jordan, enter the Promised Land, and for the first time in forty years, they are going to eat until they are full. They are going to build houses. Their flocks are going to multiply. Silver and gold will start piling up. And Moses, who knows human nature as well as anyone in Scripture, says this: "Be careful that you do not forget." Not "try to remember." Be careful. That is a stronger word. It implies danger. It implies that forgetting is not just a possibility but a probability. Prosperity does not just make us comfortable. It makes us forgetful.

We forget what we should remember and remember what we should forget. Think about that for a second. We can hold onto a grudge from fifteen years ago with crystal clarity but somehow lose sight of the fact that God pulled us out of our own personal Egypt. We remember every slight, every offense, every time someone let us down. But the moments when God showed up, when he provided, when he rescued, when he made a way where there was no way? Those fade. They blur. They become part of the scenery, like that monument on US 1.

Here is the framework I want you to carry with you all week: What we remember determines how we respond, and how we respond reveals what we remember. That is not a bumper sticker. It is the operating system of the soul. Show me what a person remembers, and I will show you how they live. The Israelites who remembered Egypt responded with gratitude. The Israelites who forgot responded with grumbling. The difference was never circumstance. It was always memory.

Prosperity is not the problem. God is not against you having a nice house or a growing business or a healthy retirement account. The text is clear: he is the one who gives you the ability to produce wealth. The problem is what prosperity does to our memory. When things are going well, we start to believe that we are the reason. My hard work. My discipline. My intelligence. And slowly, subtly, the God who brought us out of whatever wilderness we were wandering in gets pushed to the margins. He becomes background noise.

I have been a pastor long enough to see the pattern repeat itself. After a health scare, a job loss, a close call on the highway, people come back to church. The parking lot fills up. The prayer requests pour in. Gratitude is genuine. Dependence on God is real. And then the crisis passes. Six months later, the chair is empty. The Bible is back on the shelf. The comfort creeps in, and with it, the forgetfulness. We do not mean to forget. Nobody wakes up and says, "Today I am going to push God to the margins of my life." It happens the way erosion happens. Slowly, silently, one comfortable day at a time.

When I was twenty-one years old, I was praying daily for God to open doors. Bold prayers. Specific prayers. And through a chain of events that only God could have orchestrated, I ended up flying out to Southern California. I walked into a room and spent about forty-five minutes sharing Christ with Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali. One of the most recognizable human beings on the planet, sitting across from a twenty-one-year-old kid from the South, listening to the gospel. I have a photo from that day hanging in my office. Not because I want to impress people who walk in. I keep it there as a memorial. A marker. A reminder that God answers prayers in ways you could never script.

Every time I look at that photo, it takes me back. It reminds me that God was faithful when I was young and broke and did not know what I was doing. And if he was faithful then, he is faithful now. That is what memorials do. They fight the forgetfulness that prosperity breeds. They pull you over to the side of the road and make you stop, read the plaque, and remember.

Moses told Israel to remember because he knew they would forget. I am telling you the same thing today. Build your memorials. Keep the photos. Write down the stories. Tell your kids and your grandkids about the time God showed up. Because the cars are always going to be flying past. The world is always going to be moving at sixty miles an hour. And if you do not make a deliberate choice to stop and remember, you will drive right past the most important markers of your life without even knowing they were there. What you remember will determine how you respond to everything this week throws at you. So remember well.

Apply

Build a memorial – Write down three specific moments when God showed up for you. Put them somewhere you will see them daily. A note on your mirror, a reminder on your phone, a photo on your desk. Fight the forgetfulness that prosperity breeds.

Pray

Father, forgive me for the times I have driven right past your faithfulness without stopping to notice. I do not want to be someone who forgets. Open my eyes to the memorials you have already placed in my life and give me the discipline to build new ones. You brought me out of my own wilderness, and I will not forget it. In Jesus' name. Amen.