Wednesday in the Word

 

Happy Wednesday, friends! When it's not a link party day, I love to spend Wednesdays talking about something from the Word of God. If you're my friend on social media, you would have seen this last week, but I wanted to share it here today as well.

I'm still trucking along reading the Bible chronologically this year and the era that I'm in is the divided kingdom era. The way that I read and the plan that I follow divides the Bible into 14 eras: creation, patriarch, exodus, conquest, judges, kingdom, divided kingdom, captivity, return, silent, gospel, church, mission, the end and new beginning. The point of the eras is to help you be able to always know what's going on as you read, no matter where you're reading in the Bible. For instance, in the book of Joshua, I know that takes place right after the exodus era when Moses has died and passed the baton of leadership to young Joshua, and they move into the land of Canaan, or the promised land that Moses never got to reside in. Joshua had two jobs—conquer the land and then divide the land. It's extremely helpful to know these eras and I have all kinds of cheat sheets and a website I use to help me. If you'd like to read more on the eras and to have them better explained, you can click here. 

That being said, I've made it to the divided kingdom era. This is after David has died, Solomon has died and now the nation of Israel splits into two kingdoms: the northern kingdom that is referred to as Israel and the southern kingdom that is Judah. With the exception of ONE king, all the other kings in the northern kingdom were evil. In the southern kingdom, there were some evil kings, but there were also some good kings. Some started and ended evil, some started as evil and ended as good and some started and stayed good. This was where I found myself as I read last week when I came across this verse.

I don't know how familiar you are with Rehoboam, but he was a peach of a king. (I'm being sarcastic.) He is the one who asked an advisor and some young friends for advice on how to tax the land and rather than taking the wise advice that he was given of lightning their loads physically and financially, he took the advice of his young friends and oppressed them even more and taxed them more heavily. (Does this ring a bell?) Can you imagine how those poor people that lived under his reign felt? You probably can imagine, because we're all experiencing a spike in prices everywhere across the board. Rehoboam was king in the southern kingdom of Judah and though he did some good things for the land, like building stronger cities of defense for them, after he'd been established as king, he abandoned the ways of God¹.

In spite of what he did after he abandoned the ways of God, when he humbled himself before God, God  turned His wrath away from Rehoboam. Immediately after reading that, the Lord gave me some insight on this verse to apply to today. It seems we're living in similar times, doesn't it? As a nation, we've completely abandoned the ways of God. We've removed prayer from schools, we have zero regard for the sanctity of life, we celebrate what is wicked and what used to be called good is now considered wrong, at least in the eyes of the world. We are living among blatant sin against a holy and righteous God, and friends, there will be a price to pay for this someday. I believe some of what we're living in current day is a small portion of what is to come. Much like evil king Rehoboam, we could humble ourselves and seek God and He would heal our land, like what is written in 2 Chronicles 7:14. 

But, that may never happen. It may, but I don't think it's going to. I think it's a sign of the time we're living in and I believe things will get worse before they get better. I know this isn't my usual kind of blog post, but here's where the hope comes in that the Lord so sweetly reminded me of last week. In spite of what will someday come, there will still be some good in the land, because the people of God will still be here (before the Lord returns for us). The Bible tells us that even though our hearts are deceitful and wicked above all else (Jeremiah 17:9), that greater is HE (God) than he (Satan) that is in the world (1 John 4:4). For those of us who are Christians, the Holy Spirit of God dwells within us! Now I know that sometimes it seems as if our very real enemy wins some battles (and he does), but guess what? I've read the end of the Bible and Jesus wins the war. Satan will be thrown into the fiery pit of hell someday and he knows his days are numbered. Much of what we see now is a spiritual war that is raging all around us and I'd bet a lot of us aren't even aware of that, myself included sometimes. I think back to what Ms. Clara said in my favorite movie, War Room: our real battle is with the enemy and we must fight him on our knees in prayer.

God has given us power to overcome evil, but we must fight the battle with our spiritual weapons, the most important being prayer. Prayer is the activator of all the spiritual weapons! If you haven't read Ephesians 6:10-18 lately, might I suggest you do so sometime today? Paul goes into much greater detail than I will here, but it's worth the read. The main takeaway is this: I have hope in Jesus and you can too! We can trust in Him and know that He is sovereign. He has the whole world in His hands! We don't have to worry or be fearful or live in that fear. We can rest in Him and know that He has it all under control. This is why it's vitally important to know Him. Do you know Jesus? Not know of Him, but do you truly know Him and have a relationship with Him as your Savior? We are getting closer to His return and I would love for you to be with me in Heaven someday.

The world isn't growing evil, it's growing gloriously dark and closer to Jesus, as one of my favorite pastors Adrian Rogers used to say. So, turn off mainstream media news outlets. Don't look out and around, look UP. Be encouraged today, friends.

Love to all. 

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Footnote:

¹ from this website: https://www.gotquestions.org/King-Rehoboam.html