Impact

When God Forgets You

How do you respond when God forgets you? He forgets your cell phone number, your e-mail address, and your Face book page. He doesn’t recognize your picture or recall your address or even your long unused landline. How do you feel?

 

As far as you can tell God has forgotten He even created you let alone had a plan for your life. All of those identity defining expectations He once gave you are long gone and never thought of—at least by Him.

 

Perhaps you’re like Moses who defended one of God’s enslaved people only to have to flee for his life. Once he was a member of the most elite family on earth but then he married a woman utterly unlike Pharaoh’s daughter. Instead of a prince he become a shepherd, hearing nothing but bah, bah, bah all day long.

 

Or maybe you remember the brilliant Saul with the most elite education of his culture, proven to be the brightest man in his world, once recognized as the most promising man of his time, but then he had to return home to mom and dad in the city where he grew up.

 

Like Moses and Saul you may have had a plan for the future to change your world and make you a leader in your day, a person of impact and influence. Instead of having impact and influence, however, you are unremembered and unknown.

 

How do you respond when God doesn’t do what you expected Him to do?

 

Undoubtedly the better question is how do you respond when God does show up and gives you a far bigger assignment than you ever expected as He did Moses and Saul? Maybe He’s doing that already. What is God like when He acts on our behalf?

 

God Does The Unexpected. He does things we don’t expect, things we don’t deserve, things we should never have. He does remember us after all.

 

God accomplishes the unlikely. Who would ever have thought He would start a nation through a man who escaped to become a shepherd or that He would impact the Roman Empire through a man who was so violent at one point that he could not be trusted?

 

God Remembers The Unwanted. Who wanted either Moses or Saul except God?

 

God Produces the Unanticipated. Do you believe that either Moses or Saul anticipated that God would call them to be the most uncommon leaders of their day? Can you possibly anticipate that God has a purpose for you?

 

God Enables the Unable. Has it occurred to you that you are unable to do what God wants you to do? Do you realize that unless you know you are unable to do what God has for you, you can never do anything He has for you?

 

God Uses the Unforgotten. Moses and Saul certainly appeared to be forgotten, but they turned out to be unforgotten. While they were forgotten God was making them unforgettable. Could He be doing that for you?

 

If you feel you are forgotten, always realize that you are remembered. God has not turned His back on you or pushed you aside or forgotten you. God has something for you to do that you cannot do but He can. Listen to the sheep bah and do your meaningless daily tasks because God has not forgotten you. The question is Are you ready to be remembered?

 

MORE RESOURCES AT:

 

Bill Lawrence is the President of Leader Formation International, Senior Professor Emeritus of Pastoral Ministries and Adjunct Professor of DMin Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary where he served full-time for twenty-four years (1981-2005). During this time he also was the Executive Director of the Center for Christian Leadership for twelve years.