There is one word from God that runs through the Scriptures like a sad and poignant refrain:

“My people have forgotten Me.” Forgotten is an intense and awful word. It expresses the final issue in human alienation from the Divine. 

Open and deliberate revolt against God shows, at any rate, some respect for His power. And even formal prayer, empty though it be, offers some recognition of God’s existence. But to forget Him, to live and plan and work as though He were not, to dismiss Him as insignificant—this is surely the last expression of a separated life. 

People are never really dead so long as they are remembered. The real death is to be forgotten. How, then, do we come to forget God? One example from Scripture is this: 

“Thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength” (Isaiah 17:10, KJV). Here is a forgetfulness that is born when we have recovered from some weakness. Pride of strength makes us forget the rock out of which we were hewn. This is a common and insidious peril.

Our weakness helps us remember God; our strength is the friend of forgetfulness. Perhaps this is most apparent in our physical weakness. In our weakness we remember the Lord, and the dim things of the unseen come clearly into view. But when our strength is regained, the vivid vision fades again. And so our strength is really our drug. It is an opiate which ministers to spiritual forgetfulness. 

And so it is with every kind of strength. Frailty in any direction makes us lean upon the power of the Almighty, and in every frailty our remembrance of Him is keen and clear. But our strength helps to create a feeling of independence, and we become unmindful of our God. 

Is there any help for us? There is a very gracious promise of the Master in which I think these perils are anticipated: “He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26, KJV). Here is the promise of a gracious minister to the memory, strengthening it in its hold upon the unseen. 

If the memory were to be really hallowed it would forget many things which it now remembers, and it would remember many things which it now forgets. The ministry of the Holy Spirit will deal with this unwise retention, and will make a memory leaky where it is wise for it to lose. But, more than that, it will strengthen its powers of spiritual comprehension, and will enable it to keep hold of the unseen and the eternal. ©2024 BGEA

John Henry Jowett, born in England, was a beloved pastor in the U.K. before coming to America in 1911 to become pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. He returned to England to pastor Westminster Chapel in 1918. This article is adapted from a chapter in his book titled Things That Matter Most: Devotional Papers. Work is in the Public Domain. 

The Scripture verse was taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version. 

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