Missing Peace
Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? Psalm 85:18
When I think about the lesson of Josiah in the Bible, I remember that he was a young king. And that he found the word of God in the Temple and read it to his people, making a covenant with the Lord to follow all of his Law and having his people do likewise. This week, I’ve taken a closer look at Josiah’s life.
Josiah was crowned at 8 years old, following behind two evil kings, and yet he sought the Lord. Why? What made him want to get closer to a God that had been pushed aside for generations? Idol worship was taking place in the temple. Generations of Israelites had forsaken the God who has brought them out of Egypt, into the Promised Land, and had repeatedly forgiven them for falling away from him throughout the period of the judges. As far as I can find, he had little to nothing in his rearing that we know about that would lead him to search for the God of his ancestors, but he did. We learn in chapter 34 of 2 Chronicles that Josiah was only 16 years old when he began to seek the Lord. By age 20 he was clearing the idolatrous worship and sacrifice places out of Judah and Jerusalem. What I didn’t understand correctly, however, was that Josiah didn’t find the word of the Lord until the 18th year of his reign. He found the book of the law after he began to clean the temple… after he began seeking the Lord.
This period of personal revival for me, started with a comment from a friend. The Holy Spirit used that comment to shed light on my sinful attitude about my commitment to my faith. As a result of that conviction, I began to seek a closer relationship with the Lord through repentance and prayer and .. AFTER THAT… is when the renewed hunger for the Word developed in my heart. The first thing I had to do was respond to His drawing and seek Him. Of course, we know that we never look for God on our own, even as Christians we can get to a point in our faith at which we need to be drawn back into a closer relationship with the Lord. We leave a close walk with Him, never the other way around.
Paul refers to himself in the opening of the letter to the Philippians as a “servant to Christ” but if you look in Strong’s you find that the word servant comes from the word for slave. How I want to behave as a slave to Christ! We are purchased by the blood of Christ, and should behave as such. I want my every action and behavior to be in line with his will for my life. The only way I can know that will is to stay in connection with Him through time in His word, time in prayer, and time spent worshipping Him with His Church.
As we look honestly at our relationship with the Father, we know if we’re walking as close as we have in the past. If the answer is no to that question, what’s holding you back? I thought about those days following my salvation… how happy and free and close to God I felt. I wanted that back. And I wanted it back bad enough to sacrifice everything, to surrender myself completely beyond my soul… my daily life, my thought life, my financial life… things my teenage self never thought of when I was saved. As a result… has my life changed? Definitely! Would I go back? Not for all the wealth in the world.
