2 Chronicles 16 – 20

Verse 16:9 talks about Asa’s conflicts with God:

The Eternal watches everything that happens on earth so that He may strongly support those who follow Him. By hiring mercenaries, you have acted foolishly and proven that you are not following Him. From now on, peace will elude you and you will surely fight wars.

While Asa fought for God in removing idols and turning the Israelites back to following God, he showed a lack of “faith” in making alliances with other nations. As I sit here this morning I am struggling with making an alliance with a “bank” so we can “win” our perfect home. Am I doing what Asa did? I pray not, but need to consider this will all happen yet will be messy in the process and I need to hold strong. “Faith” is easy in theory, but difficult when you have a nation about to invade!

Verse 16:12 shows an addition lapse in “faith” by Asa:

In the 39th year of his reign, Asa contracted a severe foot disease. Once again, he had the opportunity to look to the Eternal, but instead he relied on physicians.

Again, faith in practice and faith in theory are often different. When I dropped dead a few month ago was it a demonstration of faith that 911 was called or should Katy and Ella just prayed over me? I thank God that everything happened the way it did and I lived to tell our story, but did we rely on physicians and not God? At the same time the medical profession admits that a miracle happened for me to survive, so maybe they were “professional” confirmation of this fact. With everything hind sight is 20/20 and with Asa he had a prophet who warned him and we could see the failure. I wonder if Asa justified his actions as following God.

Verse 17:3 talks about the new king who assumed the role:

The Eternal was with Jehoshaphat because he ruled as David had throughout his reign and as his father Asa had at the beginning of his reign. Jehoshaphat did not seek the lords of foreign religions; 

Jehoshaphat is one of the few kings who followed the Eternal like David and Solomon had. There had been 4 generations that drifted away from God before Jehoshaphat and as we will see very few after. Saul was anointed king due to the demands of the people. God relented in protest knowing the end result would be a lack of faith in God. And we see only a few instance where this is not the case. Verse 20:20 shows Jehoshaphat leadership:

Early the next morning they went out to the wilderness of Tekoa. There Jehoshaphat’s message to Judah was not about courage in battle.

Jehoshaphat: Listen to me, Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Trust in the Eternal One, your True God, not in your own abilities, and you will be supported. Put your trust in His words that you heard through the prophets, and we will succeed.

 

Again I wonder today if these words are spoken for my benefit. I look to the tumultuous events that have led up to where we are today and in the middle of them was in panic and I am today (only not anywhere near like I have been before). We decided we wanted to move, I was laid off with a generous severance package, the land “anchor” went under contract, we found two perfect homes, sold a home locally to survive on, the contract got extended, lost the two perfect homes, found a better home and now are where we are at today. In hind sight it all has worked perfectly.

We have remained out of debt, did not move into an environment that was not “perfect” into homes that had problems like high power lines, commercial development, poor construction and major roads where Lilly would chase cars and cyclists. In addition to all this we have found what seems to be the “perfect” home/property that only needs a barn/apartment to finish it out. Knowing the past helps us move with faith in the future no matter if it’s present circumstances or those of a king some 3000 years ago.