August 4th

Jehosaphat

             They rose early in the morning and went out into the wilderness of Tekoa; and as they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Listen to me, O Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem! Believe in the Lord your God and you will be established; believe his prophets.”  When he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the Lord and praise him in holy splendor, as they went before the army, saying,

“Give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever.”

As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush against the Ammonites, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were routed.  For the Ammonites and Moab attacked the inhabitants of Mount Seir, destroying them utterly; and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they all helped to destroy one another.

                 When Judah came to the watchtower of the wilderness, they looked toward the multitude; they were corpses lying on the ground; no one had escaped.  When Jehoshaphat and his people came to take the booty from them, they found livestock in great numbers, goods, clothing, and precious things, which they took for themselves until they could carry no more. They spent three days taking the booty, because of its abundance.  On the fourth day they assembled in the Valley of Beracah, for there they blessed the Lord; therefore that place has been called the Valley of Beracah to this day.  Then all the people of Judah and Jerusalem, with Jehoshaphat at their head, returned to Jerusalem with joy, for the Lord had enabled them to rejoice over their enemies.  They came to Jerusalem, with harps and lyres and trumpets, to the house of the Lord.  The fear of God came on all the kingdoms of the countries when they heard that the Lord had fought against the enemies of Israel. And the realm of Jehoshaphat was quiet, for his God gave him rest all around.

2 Chronicles 20:20-30

             

            Judah was not a mighty nation, but they served a mighty God.  When king Solomon died his nation split into two pieces.  The Northern Kingdom was called Israel and included 10 of the 12 tribes.  The Southern Kingdom was called Judah and only included 2 tribes, but they had the holy city of Jerusalem.  The vast majority of the wealth and the resources and the military power resided with Israel.  In general, Judah’s kings and leaders were more faithful and connected to the God of their fathers and it was He who protected the tiny nation.

            Take, for example, Jehosaphat.  He was king of Judah at the same time that Ahab was king of Israel.  King Jehosaphat made alliances with the Northern Kingdom, because that is how smaller nations survived in the ancient world, and even went to war by their side.  But when Judah was invaded by an alliance of three nations, Israel was nowhere to be found.  Jehosaphat’s people were outnumbered and faced being wiped out.  The King came before God in his darkest moment, asking for mercy and wisdom.

            God assured Jehosaphat that the upcoming battle with the invaders would not be a test of their strength or their courage or their military might.  This battle would be decided by whether they listened to God and believed Him or not.  Jehosaphat led his people into the wilderness and put a choir in front of the army to worship God.  When they found the enemy, the battle was already over.  God had turned the three nations against each other.  It took the army of Judah three days to collect all of the wealth that the invaders had left behind.  They returned to their homes singing and worshipping, celebrating God’s goodness.  The event that had been intended for their destruction had been transformed by the Lord into an event that poured out riches and blessing upon the people and brought decades of peace to the land.

              Why do we face hardships?  Why are there trials that come into our lives and push us to the brink of what we can handle?  Sometimes…sometimes they are simply ways that God wants to bless us and grow us that we never would have expected. 

            Our home heating system was falling apart, which is dangerous when you live in a place that drops to -50, and we did not have the money to fix it.  I was working multiple jobs, my son was only a couple of years old and we were all running on no sleep.  I was getting more and more stressed about what was going to happen with us in the upcoming winter when we ran across a grant for low-income families to weatherize their house.  We applied and went in for the interview.  They said that we probably would not qualify for the $2,000 grant. My heart sank and despair rolled over me.  However, they said, we were great candidates for a different program that would put $30,000 worth of repairs and upgrades into our house.

            I was blown away.  The crisis that I saw and stressed about and questioned God about was actually a path to investing more resources into our lives than I had dared to imagine.  Sometimes that is how God works.

  

A moment to reflect:

How has God used a difficulty to give you more than you imagined?