Tag: trusting God

The Worst of Kings and the Best of Kings – Works Together for Good

2 Chronicles 33-34

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Saturday, December 3

Yesterday’s reading ended with an ominous sentence, “His son Manasseh succeeded him.” Manasseh might very well be the worst king of Israel. He sacrificed his own son as a burnt offering to a pagan god. He killed the prophet Isaiah. Yet when God punished him, he repented and tried to defeat the evil that he had done. However, his son was also evil, but then his grandson Josiah was one of the best kings ever in Israel.

 

A brief point I’d like to make on this passage: good things can create an opportunity for bad, while good can come out of bad. That sounds odd,  doesn’t it? Yet Hezekiah’s extended life, a gift from God, allowed him to produce Manasseh as an heir. Yet from the degeneration of the kingly line that began with Manasseh and continued with his son, came the best king of Israel. The point is that we cannot make predictions based on circumstances, but God will work for good whenever people will be open to him, regardless of how bad the people around them have been.

 

I thought of this often during the current election. People predicted dire consequences if either candidate was elected. Everyone of them could happen, but these are all human circumstances. Regardless of whether your candidate is elected or not, the only good that we can count on is what happens when people place their trust in God and act faithfully. Everything else is just a matter of circumstance.

 

Let’s finish this week by looking at the good that can happen when people respond to God in obedience. As unusual as it might seem, it appears that by the time of Josiah, God’s people were living by tradition rather than actually reading the Holy Scriptures. While doing the right thing and restoring the Temple, the priest Hilkiah found the book of the Law. Josiah was immediately convicted when he read these words and responded by bringing his life and the kingdom of Judah in line with the law of God. Great things happened because of it.

 

I really appreciate the opportunity to write these devotions this week. It thrills me that you are taking the time to read the word of God. There are many things that are difficult to understand, but good things will happen when we are obedient to the things that we do understand. One thing that I’m certain of is that obedience to what we know is the accelerator of Christian growth. In other words, we are all at different levels of spiritual maturity, but we can all grow by living the life that God reveals to us.

-Greg Demmitt

What Do You Put Your Trust In?

2 Chronicles 12-16

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Sunday, November 27

2Chr. 16:11   The acts of Asa, from first to last, are written in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel. 12 In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe; yet even in his disease he did not seek the LORD, but sought help from physicians. 13 Then Asa slept with his ancestors, dying in the forty-first year of his reign. 14 They buried him in the tomb that he had hewn out for himself in the city of David. They laid him on a bier that had been filled with various kinds of spices prepared by the perfumer’s art; and they made a very great fire in his honor.

 

I first noticed these verses, the last four of today’s reading, during the summer before my senior year in high school, when I read through the entire Bible for the very first time. That raised a lot of questions in my mind, especially if it meant that we were not supposed to go to doctors but instead trust that God would heal us without any medical intervention.

 

When you read today’s scripture, you’ll notice that it wasn’t the first time that Asa didn’t trust God. His rule as king started out great as he got rid of the idol worship in Judah, even confronting his mother for her idolatry. Because of this God gave him a victory over a huge army that invaded out of Ethiopia and Libya. However, later when the northern tribes of Israel threatened Judah, he made an alliance with the king of Aram rather than trusting God to deliver him from a much smaller army than that of Ethiopia and Libya. So the way that he treated his illness was a symptom of his lack of trust in God, rather than simply a misunderstanding about healing.

 

So is it wrong to get medical help? I don’t think this text speaks directly to modern medicine, but rather to a practice of medicine that was more like going to a witch doctor than a physician. If you have a splinter, you pull it out with tweezers instead of waiting for God to miraculously remove it. Many things in modern medicine are as clear to doctors as pulling a splinter is for us. I cannot imagine that it is wrong to use what has been learned through using the brains God has given us in order to make life better for people. I am thankful for the advances in medicine that helped defeat my cancer last year, even though I am also very thankful to God for getting me through it.

 

The bigger question is, are we willing to trust God when we are afraid? Asa forgot what God had done for him, and showed it by making the wrong alliances. Can we remember what God has done for us?

 

Each one of us can ask ourselves the question, “How do I demonstrate my trust in God in the life I am living?”

– Pastor Greg Demmitt  (Gatesville, Texas)