and He led you through that awful, vast wilderness with its poisonous snakes and scorpions, through that desert where there was no water. He made water come out of a hard rock; ¹⁶ and He fed you in the wilderness with manna, a food your ancestors had never heard of. He did all this to humble you and test you, but it was all intended for your good in the end.

DUTERONOMY 8:15-16 voice

From experience I can say that I have sometimes prayed to God on a specific matter and after He answered me, I thanked Him (sometimes) and in time forgot what He had done for me. Has the same thing happened to you?

Sometimes we are so focused on God answering us that when He does, we simply continue with our lives, risking forgetting or belittling everything He has done for us. This is dangerous because this behavior can bring pride to the heart by thinking that all we have accomplished is by our own efforts (Deuteronomy 8:11–18). The Bible speaks of the importance of not forgetting what God did for us and our ancestors (Psalm 78:1–14). One of the most important customs for the Jewish people was to make sure that future generations were told all the things God did for them in the past. This helped them keep a grateful heart for all the wonders God had done.

Thanking God for what He has done in our lives requires humility. Thanking Him for what He will do requires faith. Faith is the certainty of what is not yet seen. To thank God for what He will do is to live confidently knowing that although we do not understand everything, we do know that God is with us always, that He is in control, and that His will is good, pleasant, and perfect.

Divine Grace

To keep the people from this danger of forgetting God, which follows so easily from the pride of wealth, Moses once more enumerates in Deuteronomy 8:14-16 the manifestations of divine grace, their deliverance from Egypt the slave-house, their being led through the great and terrible desert, whose terrors he depicts by mentioning a series of noxious and even fatal things, such as snakes, burning snakes, scorpions, and the thirsty land where there was no water. In this parched land the Lord brought the people water out of the flinty rock, the hardest stone, and fed them with manna, to humble them and tempt them (cf. Deuteronomy 8:2), in order (this was the ultimate intention of all the humiliation and trial) “to do thee good at thy latter end.” Bible Hub

Through the desert of tribulation, anxiety, distress, and merciful interposition, He conducts them to Canaan, into the land of rest, where they are refreshed and satisfied in the full enjoyment of the blessings of His grace and salvation; but those alone who continue humble, not attributing the good fortune and prosperity to which they attain at last, to their own exertion, strength, perseverance, and wisdom, but gratefully enjoying this good as a gift of the grace of God., to create property, to prosper in wealth (as in Numbers 24:18). God gave strength for this (Deuteronomy 8:18), not because of Israel’s merit and worthiness, but to fulfil His promises which He had made on oath to the patriarchs. “Bible Hub