Forgetting God

I suppose this is out of chronological order, but I do kind of want to deal with this before I get to Solomon’s story.

It’s the story of the Reubenites, Gadites, and half-tribe of Manasseh.  These were the people that stayed on the opposite side of the Jordan, apart from the rest of the Israelites.

As you may recall, they found the land there pleasant and so they asked permission from Moses to stay there.

Moses told them as long as they helped the rest of their brothers in their fight against the Canaanites, they could do so.

And so after the rest of the Israelites had taken possession of their land, these three tribes went back across the Jordan and settled there.

They started out well.  When they were under attack from their enemies, they cried out to God and it says,

He answered their prayers, because they trusted in him. (1 Chronicles 5:20)

But like their brothers across the Jordan, they soon forgot about God and what he had done for them.

Instead of continuing to follow God, they turned to the false gods of the land.

And though they had brave, famous leaders among them, or perhaps, because they had brave, famous leaders among them, they stopped trusting in the one true God.

They started trusting other gods and trusting themselves.

The result?  They were taken into captivity.

What can we learn from this?  Sometimes we face times of trouble and because we can see no way out of our problem, we turn to God and ask for his help.

God in his mercy delivers us as we put our trust in him, and our life turns around.

But after the problem is dealt with, it can become so easy to forget God and pursue other things.

We pursue our career, money, things, romance, or other things.

In themselves, they are not necessarily bad.

But when we make them the most important things in our lives, they can cause us to forget the one who should be first in our lives.

We then start making bad decisions, and we find ourselves in a worse state than the one we were in before God saved us.

Where are you in your life?  Are you feeling comfortable?  Are you starting to make other things more important than God?

Be sure to keep God at the center of your life above all things.

Remember to trust him and not lean on your own wisdom, understanding and strength.

And as you do, you’ll not only find blessing, but avoid the trap that these Israelite tribes fell into.