Maybe you’ve done this, I know I have. I’ve heard something that sounds important, sounds useful and sounds like it is worth carrying for awhile and then, within a few minutes or hours that life-changing wisdom has evaporated into the air (or at least taken it’s place at the back of the long line of “things” in my mind). We receive words of healing but lose access to those very words in the situations when we need them most! I think Moses understood the human tendency toward losing grip on things we ought to hold on to. And I was reminded of this as I read Deuteronomy 11.

Deuteronomy 11:18-21 is a very visual passage about remembering what God has done and about passing on that information/heritage to the next generation. It’s important to remember this passage was written from a talk/sermon Moses gave Israel while they were still in the wilderness. This isn’t a “tune up” speech offered in the context of the Promised Land. These words are spoken while they are surrounded by barrenness and rocks and waterless places. These words are being delivered nearly 40 years after they left Egypt. These words are important because they speak to us in our own emotional and spiritual wastelands and help us make sense of those seasons.

18 “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19 You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 20 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21 that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth. – Deuteronomony 11:18-21

While reading this again I found myself wanting to log the different ways Moses (by God’s inspiration) told the people to remember the instructions they were being given:

• Bind them on your hand
• Keep them between your eyes
• Teach them to your children
• Talk about them in your house
• Reference them while you’re traveling
• Remember them when you lay down at night
• Think about them when you rise in the morning
• Make sure they’re seen in the doorways of your house
• Be aware of them when you pass through gates to leave your house

These instructions touch every aspect of our life.

• Personally
• Generationally
• Geographically
• Chronologically

In this short passage Moses basically says: you need these words everywhere.

This is a beautiful passage. But it’s equally amazing how Moses seemed to understand that if we aren’t keeping these words in front of us at all times, the benefit of these words won’t be fully available to us. He says in verse 21 that IF we keep these words in front of us and as a constant part of our life in every way the results are stunning:

• Your days on earth will be multiplied
• Your children’s days on earth will be multiplied
• Your family, for generations, will make their home in the place of God’s promise(s). 

If this passage is telling us anything it is warning us how easily we can lose our grip on the most important things. Moses is instructing us here – he’s becoming a bit of a life coach – as he reveals 9 different places we can either choose to lose the power of truth or hold on to it. The teacher is clearly saying if we don’t start intentionally keeping a “better word” in front of us, we will have given up access to the benefits of that truth.

Maybe that means we need to start writing down some biblical truths on sticky notes and putting them

• in our car (maybe over the speedometer if you don’t like to be reminded of how fast you’re going),
• on our bathroom mirrors so we remember we are fearfully and wonderfully made when we see our own face
• over the stove so we see the value of the moments of preparation not just completion
• on the door frames in our houses so we have to “pass through” truth to move into different areas
• on a phone case or lock screen so we continually value speaking the truth in love
• in our children’s/grandchildren’s lunch boxes, backpacks, school books, or steering wheels (when they get older)

What if we’re not struggling from a lack of receiving truth but a lack of retaining it? What if, when we are in wilderness places in our life, we aren’t starving from lack of provision but from misplaced abundance?