In her series of reflections in Day by Day with God beginning next Sunday, Naomi Aidoo traces the call to remember the goodness of God that runs through every part of scripture.
9 November 2025
Forget me not
In order to remember something, our job is simply to not forget it. In Psalm 103, King David reminds himself and God’s people to ‘praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits’ (Psalm 103:2, NIV). He recognised that though it should be the easiest of tasks to remember the goodness of God, we often need a reminder to do so.
Our every breath is a gift. God gives us both beauty and provision through his created world, and he enables us to experience love through the people he’s brought into our lives. These things alone make it unthinkable that we need a reminder to remember the ‘benefits’ of God, but so often we do.
Whatever our life situation, it is all too easy to be completely consumed by our circumstances. When things are going well, we often look only to the good things we have, rather than the giver. When we face difficulties, we can feel so downtrodden in our troubles that we forget that Jesus tells us: ‘Take heart! I have overcome the world’ (John 16:33, NIV). We need to remember who God is and what he has done for us.
Psalm 103 encourages us to remember God’s forgiveness, compassion and power to heal and of course these themes run through many other scriptures too. In focussing on remembering God’s blessings, may our assurance of God’s great love be strengthened and lead us to praise his holy name.
Our every breath is a gift. God gives us both beauty and provision through his created world, and he enables us to experience love through the people he’s brought into our lives.
Pay attention
Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.
Deuteronomy 8:11 (NIV)
Almost as soon as I was asked to write on what God asks us to remember, I was reminded of the words ‘forget not his benefits’ (Psalm 103:2). His benefits. The psalm goes on to list those benefits and, as I read it through, I noted that they are all present in our lives because of who God is and what he’s done.
It’s interesting what we learn in ‘wilderness seasons’, isn’t it? When we are in a place of sheer desperation, what do we cling to? Where do we find our hope?
The wilderness was exactly where God found Israel in Deuteronomy 8, and much of this chapter is about both remembrance and forgetfulness.
God is calling his people to look not to their external circumstances and the wilderness they were facing, but rather to lift their eyes to the maker of heaven and earth – seeing God for who he is.
God was addressing their hearts because he knew that once they entered the promised land and life was good, there was a danger they would forget how God had cared and provided for them: ‘Then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery’ (Deuteronomy 8:14, NIV).
Much like he did with Israel, God longs for us to remember him and his benefits, purely because he is God, not just because of what he can give us.
Almost as soon as I was asked to write on what God asks us to remember, I was reminded of the words ‘forget not his benefits’ (Psalm 103:2).
The sea of forgetfulness
You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
Micah 7:19 (NIV)
It might sound strange, but God is very good at forgetting things – so good, in fact, that when it comes to the past sin and entanglement of a now repentant heart, it’s as though it never happened. It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? But this is who God is.
Micah 7:18 begins with the question, ‘Who is a God like you?’ We will never be able to fathom the greatness of our God and how mighty he is. This is what God longs for us to remember – the fact that he is God. Moreover, he longs for us to remember this when we’re faced with our own sin and shame. When we feel we can’t possibly pray or seek God for comfort and love because of what we’ve done, he truly longs for us to remember that he will ‘again have compassion on us’ – again, and again, and again, and again. He will never be distant with us. In fact, he longs to draw us close.
Sometimes we struggle with this. It doesn’t seem right that, despite our actions, we have a God who will tread our sins underfoot and cast them into the sea of forgetfulness, but this is our amazing God.
What does remembering this cause us to do? How does it influence our actions? Sin does have consequences, but when we turn to God, there is absolutely no condemnation. How good are we at remembering this truth in our day-to-day lives?
What is our ‘self-talk’ like? When we make mistakes – both big and small – how good are we at remembering that, once we’ve said sorry, God doesn’t hold it against us any longer? Do we still hold it against ourselves?
We have a God who will tread our sins underfoot and cast them into the sea of forgetfulness.
All this is from God
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV)
When it comes to the things God wants us to remember, the work of Jesus on the cross is at the top of the list. However, we are not simply called to remember this truth, but also to consider what we do with such a glorious gift.
Before we were in Christ, we were blind to his goodness, love and mercy. Perhaps you remember that blindness very well, or maybe you have no recollection of feeling distant from God. In either case, the weight of what Jesus has done for us can be missed, and 2 Corinthians 5:21 helps us to remember. Not only did Christ take on our sin, but he also gave us his righteousness. Our identity is flipped on its head once we’re found in him. Remembering this truth doesn’t just mean we can marvel at what God has done for us.
In 2 Corinthians 5:20 Paul reminds us that our new identity provides us with a mission: ‘We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God.’ We must remember that the identity we have is to be shared. We are not to be tucked away and hidden. As Christ’s ambassadors, we are called to point others to Jesus’ life, death and resurrection so that they too might experience this incredible identity shift that we have known.
Whether or not you feel it today, you are Christ’s ambassador, and he wills you to remember what this means.
