Every Wednesday
Forget Not His Faithfulness
How Telling Stories Stirs Hope
By Charisse Compton in Desiring God
“I’m not in control of the car.”
One hour into our annual Thanksgiving road trip to North Carolina, my husband’s words interrupted my slumber. In a matter of seconds, our van, traveling over 70 mph, hit a patch of black ice, lost traction, slipped across the road, and slammed into the cable median, which spun us back onto the road — but now facing oncoming traffic. Regaining control of the car, my husband urged our now-totaled Toyota Sienna across two lanes of traffic and up a divinely appointed exit ramp. As we made our way across those lanes, I noted the pieces of our wreckage littering the interstate and watched as another car hit the same patch of black ice and flew off the shoulder just as we cleared the road. The whole incident lasted ten, maybe fifteen seconds, affording us only enough time to alert our kids to the danger and cry to Jesus for help. And help he did.
In shock, we checked on one another. The car was totaled, but God had delivered us from any bodily harm. We spontaneously praised God for sparing us after this fresh confrontation with the fragility of life. Then, in the hours that followed, as the shock wore off, curiosity took hold.
“Tell us about all the cars you’ve ever owned,” one of my kids suggested. And then a surprising thing happened as we began to recount story after story of God’s provision through the years. We mentally strolled through a museum of God’s faithful works on our behalf as we relived our auto history. Stories of surprising provisions and unlooked-for generosities lined the museum walls. We unearthed long-forgotten memories of gifts from family, friends, and generous church members. Even a serendipitous Craigslist post made its way to our prefrontal cortexes. And how could I have forgotten that mechanic who took pity on me as a poor college student and didn’t charge a fee for diagnosing and fixing a disconnected hose?
As we recalled God’s personal care for us, our hearts warmed again to his goodness. Remembering his past faithfulness stirred up hope “to check the rising doubt” that maybe this time he’d fail to provide. In those moments, we could not help but commend his works to the next generation (Psalm 145:4). Our auto history was just one small lens through which to behold the power of God, each story an antidote to the poison of forgetfulness. What if we reviewed our home history, job history, or health history? Time would fail us were we to tell of all God’s provisions and deliverances through the years.
When Storytellers Fall Silent
To forget is human. Forgetfulness plagued Israel after their deliverance from Egypt and entrance into the promised land. Judges 3:7 records, “They forgot the Lord their God.” Judges 8:34 similarly indicts Israel for “not remember[ing] the Lord their God, who had delivered them from the hand of all their enemies on every side.”
As the years went by, the thrill of their deliverance faded into distant memory. Families busied themselves with cultivating the land and enjoying the harvests. Satiated parents forgot their dependence on God to provide their needs. The temptation to be like the nations around them drove out the memory of the covenant they’d made with God. Fresh concerns took root, crowding out the stories of God’s deliverance from previous snares. Parents whose minds housed a museum of God’s faithful works fell silent, “and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10).
But in the face of human forgetfulness, the ever-faithful God kept working. The author of Judges records a series of divine deliverances, enough for successive generations to see and know the Lord. In the colorful stories of the judges, Israel could recount God’s surprising provisions, unlooked-for saviors, and unorthodox heroes, each story forming another exhibition in the museum of God’s faithfulness — divine antidotes to the deadly poison of forgetfulness. And yet successive generations remained silent, thus exposing themselves and their children to the peril of forgetfulness.
If only Israel had rehearsed the story of Ehud — the unconventional southpaw who crafted his own weapon and hatched a daring plot to kill Israel’s fat oppressor, King Eglon. Little boys would especially love that one! Surely the tale of Deborah, Barak, and the routing of the Canaanites at Mount Tabor bore repeating. Wielding feminine strength to overcome the mighty Sisera, Jael became the unlikely hero of one of Israel’s battle songs, a song that later lapsed into the deep recesses of Israel’s mind. You’d think Israel would have loved to retell the account of Gideon, that fearful barley loaf of a farmer who rose by faith and valiantly defeated the hordes of Midian with just three hundred men, some torches, and a few pitchers.
Story after story, colorful character after character, God displayed his power to a people prone to forget. This we learn from Israel’s error: Never stop telling your stories! Resolve not to “hide them from [our] children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord” (Psalm 78:4).
Tell Your Stories
In God’s providence, we all have stories to tell.
We can tell of the chain of events that led us to Jesus. We can revel in the host of ordinary and extraordinary stories of God’s provision throughout our lives. I could tell you about how God once used a property fire and a lapsed insurance policy to financially stabilize us when we were upside down in our mortgage — or how he used a difficult move, one that I thought would surely harden my child’s heart in bitterness, to counterintuitively persuade him of the goodness of following Jesus.
What about you? Has God preserved your life? Has he forgiven and freed you from deeply entrenched sin? Has he redeemed a desperate situation? Perhaps he has provided a way of escape when you felt trapped or shed light on a dark and confusing situation. He has certainly supplied food, money, clothing, housing, and work through both expected and unexpected means. He has been a present help to you in trouble. He has graciously used the hand of another believer to lead you through the sea (Psalm 77:19–20).
Too often, we lapse into silence when we should speak. Exhibits of God’s faithfulness are packed up and moved into long-term storage, where they remain unvisited and forgotten. We neglect to take the antidote, so forgetfulness flourishes, and ingratitude, self-pity, and doubt about God’s character take root. But what good we could do our own souls if we chose — as David did — to “forget not all [the Lord’s] benefits” (Psalm 103:2). And what good we might do for the next generation if we opened our mouths to testify of God’s glorious works.
Telling and retelling our stories of God’s faithfulness guards our hearts against forgetfulness, and hearing those stories is one of the ways God builds faith in little hearts.
Dear reader, for your faithfulness and for the faithfulness of the next generation, never stop telling your stories!