In Isaiah 17:10, we read:
“Because you have forgotten the God of your salvation,
And have not been mindful of the Rock of your stronghold…“
How does this apply to us as Adventist Christian teens?
As we go about our daily lives; as we go to school, go to church, go to the store, do homework, do chores, do music lessons, do this and that……we are very prone to FORGET God.
Believe me, I myself experienced this MANY times. Like, we may DO our morning devotions, but end up forgetting God later on in the day. And it isn’t until we go through another spiritual exercise (like family worship, maybe listen to an Audioverse sermon, whatever) our brains finally remember God, and pull Him back into the scene–until we forget Him again.
Now, God “knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14) and that we’re “weak, erring, and sinful” (Maranatha pg. 111). But I’d like to point out a stark contrast between the verse we just saw in Isaiah and Psalm 8:4:
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?
In the original Hebrew, the word for “mindful” is the word zakar (זָכַר); it basically means “to remember.” That same word ALSO appears in Isaiah 17:10, the verse we’re studying!
So, taking these two verses together, we could honestly conclude that while God is ALWAYS MINDFUL of us, God is ALWAYS REMEMBERING us……but we as fallen human beings are NOT ALWAYS MINDFUL of God; we are NOT ALWAYS REMEMBERING that God is with us, that He’s there. But the beautiful thing is that even though we may forget God, He never forgets us. He NEVER forgets you. He NEVER forgets me.
Aren’t you thankful for that? Don’t you wish you could always remember God? Well, we can’t remember Him in our own strength. Our human minds are so prone to forgetting things–especially things of a spiritual nature.
But what we can do–on a simple, practical level–is pray. We can just pray:
There’s a beautiful verse that’s also in Isaiah which reinforces this concept of God never forgetting us. And I’d like to conclude this post with that verse:
“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
And not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Surely they may forget,
Yet I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands;
Your walls are continually before Me.”
(Isaiah 49:15-16)
Amen!