Deuteronomy 8:18 But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy father, as it is this day.
Recently my family was in Florida, and every day my wife and I would take a walk in this park. One day we were walking down the bike path and there was this four-year-old kid on a bicycle. He had his feet on the pedals, his hands on the handlebars, he was going straight as an arrow, and his dad had his hand on the bike seat. If you had asked this four-year-old what he was doing, he would have said, “I’m riding a bike.” If I had said, “Wow, you are a big boy.” He would have said, “Yeah!” But the secret is that while it is true that he was riding a bike, his dad had his hand on the seat of that bike.
This is not to say that the boy being on the bike had no relevance at all to where or how the bike went, it is just that it would be silly to forget that his dad had his hand on the bike seat. In life we can either become very proud or very discouraged because we forget that there is a Father in Heaven and that God is at work. Our Father has His hand on our lives.
In Deuteronomy 8, Moses was basically warning the children of Israel about what was going to happen when they went into the land of Canaan. Verse 18 says, “But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.”
“It is he that giveth thee” is a good thing for us to remember. On the one hand you may get discouraged thinking, “I’m nobody and nobody likes me,” and you have forgotten God. Or, you can have your own Christian version of a “rags to riches” story: “I was nobody. I could do nothing, but look at me now! I’m famous. I travel. I preach to thousands of people and have four honorary doctorate degrees.” You can be a great success and still forget God. I don’t know your heart, but we just need to remember that there is a God.
Moses said to Israel, “And he [God] humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger.” Is that a nice thing to do? Here is Israel coming out of Egypt in the wilderness, and there is an aging man who is hungry because he hasn’t eaten. God did that. There is a young child who hasn’t had anything to drink. God did that.
The verse says that He allowed them to hunger and “fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not.” God allows need and then provides for the need. God does not want me to get too high or too low because both of those demonstrate an ignorance, an ignoring, of God’s literal presence in my story. So, God allowed Israel to hunger, and He also fed them with manna. Why did He do this? He did it “that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.”
If you have great success, don’t forget God. If you feel like you don’t have a friend in the world, don’t forget God. God humbled Israel so that when they got to a land that they didn’t deserve, ate from vineyards that they didn’t plant, and lived in houses that they didn’t build, then their hearts would not be “lifted up…and thou forget the LORD thy God…”
When I am so discouraged that I can’t remember that God is with me, I’m in a bad place. When I get so high that I forget that God is with me, I am in a bad place. The bottom line is don’t forget God. Today, don’t live in ignorance. Do not ignore God and His place in your story. When you acknowledge God, it will be a preventative to both discouragement and arrogance, and will put you where you ought to be today.