How often has God stood by ready, willing and able to help us, but we never turned to Him or gave Him an opportunity to intervene and bring glory to Himself through our crisis?
As a result, we have often forfeited peace and struggled under the load of unnecessary burdens—all because we did not inquire of the Lord. What’s worse, an opportunity to bring glory to God was lost.
What is so amazing is that Asa makes the same mistake twice in 2 Chronicles: “In the thirty-ninth year of the reign of Asa, he had a sickness in his feet until his sickness became grave. Even in his disease he did not seek after the Lord, but the physicians. So Asa slept with his fathers; he died in the forty-first year of his reign. (2 Chron. 16:12–13, MEV).
The author is trying, through this story, to communicate a moral that is of utmost importance. Earlier, Asa called upon the help of foreign armies instead of the Lord, and as a result, he inherited perpetual war. Then he called on the aid of doctors instead of the Lord when he became sick, and as a result, he inherited death. God wanted to help Asa. God wanted to deliver him from his enemies. God wanted to heal him from his diseases. But for some strange reason, like so many of us, Asa ignored God in the issues that mattered most, and as a result, he sealed his own fate.
The final verse of the chapter sums Asa’s life up with an almost contemptuous caption: “And they buried him in the tomb that he cut for himself … “ (2 Chron. 16:14).
In essence, Asa dug his own grave and put the final nail in his own coffin because he insisted on calling upon the arm of flesh rather than on the Lord. God was insulted by Asa’s disregard and gave him over to that which he feared most. Jeremiah 17:5 says, “Thus says the Lord: Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart departs from the Lord.”
If you are seeking God’s will for your life, it means that you are actively praying about it, waiting before the Lord and listening for His direction. Perhaps you have not heard an answer because you haven’t asked the question. Perhaps you have asked, but you haven’t been listening.
Maybe it’s time to turn off the television, put away the video games, and spend some time on your knees before the Lord, reading His Word and listening to His voice. His promise is, “You shall seek Me and find Me, when you shall search for Me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13). {eoa}
Daniel Kolenda is a missionary evangelist who has led more than 10 million people to Christ face to face through massive, open-air evangelistic campaigns in some of the most dangerous, difficult and remote locations on Earth. He is president and CEO of Christ for All Nations and hosts an internationally syndicated television program.
