The deliverance of Israel from Egypt is one of the greatest miracles ever told. We see how God heard the cries of His people (Ex 3:7) and entered into their suffering (see Is 53:3), but we are all too aware that every time God acts on our behalf, there is a tendency to forget what He has done when the next problem arises! The Israelites were allowed to leave Egypt with great wealth because of the mighty things God did, but all too soon they were faced with another problem: Pharaoh realised his loss and went after them with hundreds of chariots. Ahead of them was the Red Sea (death by drowning seemed inevitable); behind them was death from the Egyptian army. Could the God who had worked in one way in Egypt itself actually rescue them from ‘this’ problem?
We need to remember what God has done for us so that our faith is fuelled when the next difficulty or challenge comes, for whilst the challenges may well be different, our God is the same. There is no need to succumb to the ‘slough of despond’ (as John Bunyan put it) because we can (like Moses) turn to God and ask Him for help, no matter what our situations. Ps 103 remind us to ‘forget not all His benefits’, and there is real benefit in counting our blessings and remembering what God has done. We are to fuel faith with a faith-filled memory, for the same God who delivered Israel through the parting of the Red Sea is able to deliver us from evil and use every difficulty and suffering for good in our lives.
