God Just May Change Something Because of What You Say or Do - Ruminating on the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in 2 Kings 22:19-20,

"Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I have spoken against this place and its people—that they would become a curse and be laid waste—and because you tore your robes and wept in my presence, I also have heard you, declares the Lord. Therefore I will gather you to your ancestors, and you will be buried in peace. Your eyes will not see all the disaster I am going to bring on this place."

When the Bible, the "Book of the Law" was discovered in the temple during the reign of King Josiah of Judah, he tore his robes in great grief and sorrow over the abject treatment of the word of God and the judgment that treatment of it would bring. He humbled himself. The Lord did not manipulate him to be humble... it was within his heart he was humbled and horrified. Others treated the word of the Lord with contempt as demonstrated in the fact it was lost and neglected somewhere in the temple, but Josiah was different. He had a heart for the Lord and what it was the Lord had to say.

By this time, due to Judah's rejection of the Lord, the Lord had decided to have Judah destroyed with a remnant of people carried away in captivity. Because of Josiah's heart, his humility, and his reaction to what he discovered in the Scriptures, the Lord decided to spare Josiah the disaster that was going to befall Judah. It would take place following his death.

Here is yet another clear example of the Lord responding in real-time to the actions and attitudes of a person. Pop theology today declares that because the Lord is sovereign, all that happens must be the Lord's doing. If a person repents, the Lord made him repent... you know the drill. It denies God has given mankind a free will to make choices and take actions that may either please him or anger him and result in the Lord changing what he may do.

All such theology clearly thrives on the cherry-picking of selected passages of Scripture, to the neglect of the full counsel of God's word. God demonstrates to us through his word, in a great number of places, that he may change what it is he may be doing based on what a human may say or do.

This is why prayer and humbling ourselves before the Lord is so important.

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

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