Letting Go

But as for you, be strong and courageous, for your work will be rewarded.”2 Chronicles 15:7

We all have areas in our lives that are harder to surrender than others, careers, dates, time, money etc.  We trust God has a plan for our lives but are slow to give up control over certain things. Might this sound like “I surrender (almost all)?

Well, King Asa of Judah in 2 Chronicles 14:2, was the king who did what was pleasing and good in the sight of the Lord his God.  Prophecy was spoken over him and his nation that the Lord would stay with them as long as they obeyed Him!  But if they would abandon Him, he would leave them.  Verse 7 says “Be strong and courageous, for your work will be rewarded.

Asa gained courage and removed all the detestable idols from the land of Judah.  The people sacrificed to the Lord and entered into covenant to seek the Lord.   They entered into a covenant with the Lord.  God gave them rest from their enemies for thirty-five years.  During that period, Asa correctly understood that God’s power was not chanced or limited by man’s apparent strength or weaknesses.

He continually recognized that the battle belonged to the Lord and called upon him to defend His honor and people. The Lord will always give us victory as we continually focus on Him.  When the enemy messes with us he is actually messing with God and he is always a defeated foe.  Are you walking through a hard or busy time, call on the Lord! He is available.

But in Asa’s final years of reign, when Judah was invaded, instead of reaching out to the Lord who always rescued Judah from attack from their a vast army, he instead reached out to a man, the king of Aram. The prophet reminded Asa this scripture from 2 Chr 16:9 “The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. What a fool you have been! From now on you will be at war.” But, instead of Asa humbling himself and repenting, he became angry with the prophet and punished him by throwing him into prison and also oppressed some of his people. What a contrast!

Asa had trusted God in many areas of his life, his battles with other armies, his leadership of the people, his relationships with family but we see here that there was one area in his life he held back. He developed a serious foot disease soon after.  Yet, even with the severity of this disease, Asa did not seek the Lord’s help but rather turned only to his physicians!  Consequently, the inevitable happened.

The truth is that we all have the opportunities to make the correct choices.  We can only do this through the power of Holy Spirit by our reliance on the Lord and staying connected to Him daily. We have the privilege of calling on the Lord at any moment! He is a loving, merciful God.

Pray your response to the Lord personally, meaningfully and genuinely.

Reflect:

Are there areas of your life that you still need to fully surrender to God?

What action can you take this week to surrender that to Jesus?