Remembering what God has done

“Then the people answered, ‘Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! It was the Lord our God Himself who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we travelled.’” Joshua 24:16-17
Here in the last chapter of the book of Joshua, we see Joshua’s final address to the people. He warns them against turning away from the Lord and following other gods of the pagan nations around them. As we know from reading the rest of the Bible, it wasn’t long before they were doing this, during the time of the judges, then on into the time of the kings, ultimately leading to the captivities of the northern kingdom in Assyria (from which they never returned), and the southern kingdom in Babylon. All this, despite the people promising at the time that they would never forsake the Lord.
Their intentions were good at the time. They had seen the miracles that God had performed on their behalf – crossing the Jordan, the conquering of Jericho, the provision of manna. They had heard about the plagues in Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, the destruction of Korah, and so forth. Yet they still turned away from God.
There’s a lesson here for us. We all need to remember always what God has done for us in the past. One thing that can really help you with this is to keep a journal of what God does and says to you, insights you find in the Word, prayers He has answered. It doesn’t need to be every day. But it becomes a wonderful reminder, for those times when God seems to be acting aloof. We can be deceived into thinking that we’re not like these Israelites, we’ll never turn away from God. But how can we be so sure? Better to stick close to God; the way to prevent becoming lukewarm is to stay hot.