WEDNESDAY
FEBRUARY 12
If you seek
him, he will be found by you.2 Chronicles 15:2
After a Spiritual Drought,
Time for Revival
A well-known early twentieth-century hymn prays:
“God of grace and God of glory, on Thy people pour Thy pow’r. / Crown Thine
ancient Church’s story; bring her bud to glorious flow’r. / Grant us wisdom;
grant us courage for the facing of this hour, for the facing of this hour.”
When such prayers are made frequently and
passionately, God often responds by sending a season of revival. This was
certainly the case in today’s reading, when a time of spiritual drought was
followed by a time of spiritual revival. That ’s the good news. The bad news is
that a revival is by definition preceded by a time of sinning, and that was the
case here as well. Thankfully,God had long ago anticipated this very sequence
of events (Deut. 4:25–31).
King Asa had been doing “what was good and right in
the eyes of the Lord” (2 Chron. 14:2), but he was swimming against the current
of his times. God, though, encouraged him to act boldly for righteousness,
first with a military victory (2 Chron. 14:9–13), and in today’s reading with a
prophetic word from Azariah, who is otherwise unknown (vv. 1–7).
Asa had already made a few modest reforms, and now
he obeyed God, took courage, and acted even more zealously to combat Israel’s
spiritual unfaithfulness. He destroyed the people’s pagan idols and restored
the altar of the Lord in the temple. The people “saw that the Lord his God was
with him” and the revival gained momentum (v. 9). The nation of Judah came
together for a national assembly, during which they offered sacrifices,
worshiped the one true God, and wholeheartedly renewed their side of the
covenant (v. 12). As He had promised, “They sought God eagerly, and he was
found by them” (v. 15).
Taken
from the Word for You Today Devotional
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