Faithful Fridays ~ Do Not Forget.

Good morning (or afternoon, or evening, or night), everyone!  :)  Good to see you.  It's time for Faithful Fridays!  :)

Faithful Fridays is a weekly "meme" hosted on my blog.  I made it so that Christians could have one day out of the week (Friday) to share something from their Christian walk on their blog.  If you'd like to participate, write your post, grab the button from the Faithful Fridays page on my blog (so that it will link back here), and come link up at the bottom of this post!  :)

**************************************************************************

Have you ever forgotten something?

I used to be really bad about this.  I would get distracted and make careless mistakes (oh, how familiar those two words are to me!) and forget what I was supposed to be doing.

Hey, I just got distracted while working on this post...by Pinterest.  :P

BUT.  We usually forget small things, right?  Like our keys, phones, chores, something someone said to us, a promise we made, etc.  

What if we forgot the big things?  Like...what if you forgot your kid?

Think bigger than that.

What if we forgot the Holocaust?  How detrimental that could be.  It's been said that those who forget history are destined to repeat it.    

Think bigger.

What if we forgot that Jesus died for us, that He is majestic and perfect and yet He still wants to stoop down to our level and love us.....?  

It would be crazy for us to forget that, right?!  I mean, Jesus saved our lives, among other things!  

And yet, we do forget.  I mean, maybe we don't flat-out forget that Jesus died for us, but we lose the essence of it; we lose the awe and the worship.  We forget how big He is and how worthy of praise and glory.  We forget how majestic and wonderful He is.

The Bible tells many accounts of people forgetting who He is and what He has done.  

via Pinterest

There was Abraham.  God called this man from his average, ordinary life.  He wasn't special.  He was no man of God.  But God spoke to him, and He called Abraham to follow Him and travel to live in a distant land.  It was a leap of faith, but Abraham and his wife, Sarah, took it, and his nephew Lot (whom Abraham loved dearly, since he had no son himself) and his wife took it, too.

When they moved, it was no small deal.  They took all of their household--their family, their slaves and servants, everyone.  It was a pretty big moving party.  And when they finally settled down on the land God told them to, things started getting tricky again.  People got restless.  Trouble was stirring up.  So Lot decided to move away from the land God had called them to, and away from Abraham and all their household and their little village.  Can you imagine how that made Abraham feel?  He had to feel a bit alone.  Probably really sad.  And maybe he felt let down because Lot hadn't continued to trust in God's word and plan for them.

Fast-forward a little bit, and Abraham finds out that Lot and his wife and others from their family have been captured by enemies and so he and other men go after them, to try to rescue them.  It's really not a "fair" battle--the enemies are so much greater than Abraham's men, but they don't have God on their side.  Abraham frees Lot and his wife.  And then Lot tells Abraham that they are moving to Sodom.

Let me put this into modern terms for you: Steve (Abraham)'s nephew, Jack (Lot) was accused of a really bad crime that he didn't commit, and Steve comes and straightens it all out and miraculously gets him out of trouble, and then Jack tells Steve that he's moving his family to Las Vegas.  

I think, if I were Abraham, that I would feel that Lot was being unfaithful and maybe even ungrateful.  And probably a bit stupid, too.  But Lot moved and Abraham went back to his little village, staying true to God.

via Pinterest

You see, Lot forgot.  Lot forgot what God had done for them, how He had called them.

And then there's Moses and the Israelites.  They're probably the best example of forgetting what God's done for you, ever.  It's almost comical.

God performs all these miracle plagues through Moses to help get them out of slavery in Egypt, and they complain and worry, even though God has told them that He will take care of them.  Then it works, and Pharaoh lets them go, and they come to the Red Sea and find Pharaoh and his soldiers right behind them, trying to drag them back into slavery, and they panic.  Okay, that's understandable.  But then God parts the sea for them!  Can you imagine?  The sea itself rose up in walls, with a pathway between for them to pass through to the other side safely....and then he cuts it back down just in time for it to crash down on the soldiers.  How awesome is our God?!  And after that, throughout the days and weeks and months and years that follow, the Israelites keep forgetting and forgetting and lapsing back into their old ways and completely not trusting.  They even started worshiping a gold statue when Moses went up on the mountain to get the Ten Commandments!  Moses was so angry and frustrated when he came down and saw it, he broke the commandments and had to go up and get a second set!  Can you imagine?

And I think one reason all this stuff kept happening is that the Israelites didn't tell their children what God had done for them.  They should have been telling their children over and over again and openly worshiping God, but I guess they weren't because their children made the same mistakes they did.

Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live.  Teach them to your children and their children after them.

-Deuteronomy 4:9

Now, fast-forward again to the 1950's.  Dr. von Braun, a scientist from Germany who worked on rockets for Hitler during WWII, then moved to the states and started working for their space and rocket research, became a Christian.  Crazy, right?  He started out working for Hitler and then became a Christian scientist working for America.  

What an awesome testimony!  He was kind of the early mastermind of NASA.  He greatly influenced it.  Bible scriptures were read during space missions, God and the Bible were referenced all during NASA's early history.  

And then he died, and  NASA lost all that.  Now, they're pretty heavily turned toward evolution.  Isn't that sad?  One man made a difference for a good bit of time, and then he died and we forgot what he taught us.   

Do you see a pattern?  I guess it's part of our fallen, sinful nature....forgetting.  We forget some of the most important people and things.  We take it for granted and become ungrateful.  

Today, we're also forgetting the distress and deep trouble all our forefathers went to to found a godly, secure, stable, free nation for us called America.  And we just might lose it, if we're not careful.

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.

-Deuteronomy 8:11

Let's not forget all that God has done for us, friends!  :)

God bless you and have a great day!

Joy :)