This week I found out about King Asa.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. His story is in 2 Chronicles 14-16. I won’t bore you with the details but basically, God sent a message to Asa and said, “The LORD is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.”
For most of Asa’s life, he served the Lord with great fervor and did good in the eyes of the Lord. (You know; that “well done good and faithful servant” stuff) In fact, in chapter 15:17, it says that Asa’s “heart was fully committed to the LORD all his life.” After 35 years of reigning as king of Judah, that’s a huge compliment. However in the 36th year, everything took a turn for the worse.
In that year, King Asa made a mistake by relying on his “earthly knowledge” to solve his problem instead taking it to God. So, as God always does, a prophet is sent to Asa to tell him he has angered the Lord.
When the prophet delivers the bad news, instead of repenting, Asa becomes enraged at the prophet and throws him in prison! And further hardening his heart, he even “brutally oppresses” some of the people of the land.
Crazy, right?
But the thing that blows my mind is that later in the chapter, it describes how Asa had a foot disease and still wouldn’t consult the Lord. He only relied on the best physicians to help him. He dies shortly after his 41st year as King of Judah.
After reading this, I went from shocked, to perplexed, to extreme sorrow. Okay, maybe not extreme sorrow, but it’s still pretty sad. This guy did everything he was supposed to do for 35 years as Judah’s king! But in the last five years of his life, he’s too prideful to admit his mistake. Essentially this seals his fate because for the rest of his pitiful life, he tries to prove that he doesn’t need God. I mean c’mon! For the Bible to mention that he wouldn’t even ask God for help with his foot is saying something.
It just reminded me when you’ve promised to fully commit yourself over to the Lord, it’s forever. Not the “forever” that the world means as in a really long time, but forever, like; never ending. If you start a race, the point is to finish it. You wouldn’t stop 10 feet short because your lungs were hurting. That’s foolishness right? It’d be better to finish than to stop short, yet, that’s what Asa did.
Learn from Asa, fully commit yourself to God. The Apostle Paul summarizes it best in 2 Corinthians 13:5:
“Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? — unless indeed you are disqualified.”
But don’t take this too seriously; it’s just your salvation.
Wow! Thank you for this! This analogy was powerful too. We just gotta hang in there. Mercy! God is able to help us though. Thank God for his mercy.
So true 🙂
Mercy!!! Powerful indeed. We must always remember that the race is not given to the swift but to those who endure to the end.!