Remember the Way He Led You

Deuteronomy 8:2 (KJV)

And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart.

Remember all the way. Not the good parts. All of it — including the forty years they would rather have skipped.

Two purposes are given for the wilderness, and both are gentle even though it did not feel gentle. To humble — to take out of them the belief that they could manage without God. And to prove — to show them what was actually inside, which nobody discovers on an easy road.

This is a kinder reading of your hardest years than you may have given them. The wilderness was not God losing track of you. It was God taking your measure and letting you see it too. You learned things about your own heart there that comfort would never have revealed.

Remembering is a command because forgetting is our habit. Look back at the last difficult stretch and name what He did in it, before you need the reminder.