But they soon forgot

Psalm 106:12-15 "Then they believed His promises and sang His praise. But they soon forgot what He had done, and did not wait for His counsel. In the desert, they gave in to their craving; in the wasteland, they put God to the test."
In Hebrews 11:27 we read that Moses "perservered because he saw Him who is invisible". Yet in the above passage, exactly the opposite was true of the children of Israel. They perservered only when their circumstances were favorable, because they were primarily influenced by whatever appealed to their senses, instead of trusting in the invisible and eternal God.
Even today, there are those who live inconsistent Christian lives because they have become preoccupied with things that are external. Some focus on their circumstances rather than focusing on God. I have struggled with this in my own life..even in the last month..as I've been dealing with a physical problem that is painful. It is so easy to get my mind on the problem, and off God. Beloved, God desires that we grow in our ability to see Him in everything, and to realize the importance of even seemingly insignificant circumstances if they are being used by Him in some way.
We read of the children of Israel that "THEN they believed His promises"...They did not believe until AFTER they saw..once they saw Him work.."THEN they believed." They doubted God when they came to the Red Sea, but when He opened the way and led them across, and they SAW Pharoah and his army drowned, "THEN they believed". The Israelites continued to live this kind of up and down existence, because their faith was dependent upon their circumstances..but dear child of God..this is NOT the kind of faith that God wants us to have.
The world says that "seeing is believing".. but God wants us to believe in order to see. The psalmist said "I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living".
Do you believe God only when your circumstances are favorable, or do you believe no matter what your circumstances might be? Faith is believing what we do not see, and the reward for this kind of faith is to see what we believe.
Taken in part from Streams in the Desert