In God We Trust?

What is our default when trouble or difficulty comes? I know for me, I can be good sometimes and immediately I’ll pray about a situation, but the next time, for some inexplicable reason I forget and not even think about asking the Lord for help or guidance (as I’ll share later).

The verse I have been thinking a lot about over the last few days is 2 Chronicles 16:9:

“For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him….”

I think this is a very well known verse, BUT, we forget the last part of the verse that says:

“You have done a foolish thing, and from now on you will be at war.”

Let me briefly outline the context which incidentally makes the meaning abundantly clear, at least I think so.

After Solomon died, the kingdom was split into two. Ten tribes of Israel were in the north and the other two, Judah and Benjamin were in the south. At this time, the king of Israel in the north was attacking and laying siege to Judah in the south and the king of Judah at that time was Asa. In a bit of a blind panic, king Asa grabbed all the valuables from the temple together with some from his own house and basically gave them all to the king of Syria and asked him to break his treaty with the king of Israel – and I love his name, king Baasha! The king of Syria obliged and because of this, Baasha had to divert his attack away from Judah.

So, king Asa got what he wanted and you would think that it was “job well done” and he had exercised his kingly duty well and protected his people and averted a disaster. But God was not at all pleased with him. Hence the “You have done a foolish thing, and from now on you will be at war.”

You see king Asa had forgotten how he used to rely on the Lord in his earlier reign. For example, got help from the Lord when he faced an invasion by Zerah the Ethiopian (Cushite), who attacked Judah with an army of one million men.

Anyway, you can see that the Lord was not pleased with Asa because he failed to call upon Him in this case with the threatening king Baasha. Asa didn’t take kindly to the rebuke and it didn’t end well for him.

The NIV text that I used above uses the word “committed” – “For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him….” Other versions say, “devoted” or “loyal”. The real sense of the meaning here is that the Lord is looking and really willing to help those that are relying on Him. You could also say, not double minded. One minute we are trusting in God alone, the next we are looking elsewhere. In Asa’s case it was for the help from a godless king of Syria.

Now, before me and you kind of scoff at the foolishness of poor old king Asa, are not we sometimes guilty of this?

Here’s just an example from my own life in just the last few days. One day, my autistic, seven year old daughter fell trying to get down from the large trampoline in the garden and fell head first and I we could hear the sickening thud as her skull hit the ground. We rushed over and my immediate reaction was to place my hand on her head and I prayed for healing and help from the Lord. Thankfully, she was okay but there was grazing on her scalp that we could clearly see. Later on that evening, mum was looking at her scalp whilst she was in the bath and was amazed because there was absolutely no visible sign of anything untoward at all. Wow, God is good and I’m so grateful for the outcome.

However, just a few days later, my daughter is having a big meltdown and not behaving at all well. I managed to get her home okay. She had forgotten all about it but I was feeling exhausted and drained by the situation. Later I was having a conversation with mum about how good it was that the Lord answered prayer when she fell from the trampoline. Well, she said to me, did you pray when she was having a meltdown? I ashamedly had to admit that I hadn’t. Why didn’t I? Well, I guess it showed where I am at sometimes and I really need to work on making it a built it default rather than an occasional go to.

One final thought. I wonder how things might work out better if did pray more first rather than just turning immediately to my own solution that comes to mind. King Asa got the result he wanted but if he had done it God’s way then for starters, he wouldn’t have wasted all that money. In fact, if things had gone a different way, instead of averting an attack from Baasha, maybe, with the Lord’s help he would have defeated him himself and then got all the spoils of victory as well.

So, I think the moral of this story is to trust in God who is actually looking to help those who are looking to Him. Plus, yes, we can get desired outcomes from other means but what are we forfeiting by doing this?