2 Chronicles 15 Devotional
By Pastor Lawrence

“If you seek the Lord, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you,” said the prophet Azariah to King Asa. These are words that ring true for believers in every generation. Of course, we know that God will never ultimately forsake his elect people, for he will continue to soften their hearts that they might respond to God’s corrections by faith. Nevertheless, when believers walk in unbelief, they will sense that God is not with them in the same way that he once was, that his strength is not as easily felt, his wisdom not as easily understood and his joy not as easily obtained. Instead of enjoying the confident and assuring presence of God, the faithless believer senses that there is a break in fellowship and a new meandering in his walk without God as the center of his life.

The prophet tells the king here that Israel was without the help of the Lord for a long time because of their faithlessness and disobedience and as a result they were also lacking peace. So, the prophet tells the king to take courage and to renew the works of the Lord; in other words, to do the things you did at first out of love for God. And when the king hears these words, he takes courage and puts away all the detestable idols from the land, repairs the altar in the house of the Lord to renew the sacrifices unto God, and gathers all the people to renew their covenant with the Lord to seek him with all their heart and soul. And when they turned unto the Lord in this way, “he was found by them, and the Lord gave them rest all around.”

This is often how the prophetic Word of God works in the life of a believer. It not only encourages and builds up the Christian, but it also corrects and rebukes the man of God that he might come to his senses, repent of his wickedness, turn away from his idols and wholeheartedly seek the face of the Lord. Oh, may this same word that has been recorded for our benefit this day, so soften our hearts to the faithfulness and steadfast love of the Lord that we too might cast off our sin with zeal and pursue the Lord with fervor.

Of course, we’ll find in the next chapter that Asa’s heart vacillates just as much as ours, and he will soon display great faithlessness in a number of ways that matches and even exceeds his great courage and love for the Lord seen in this passage. All of this is revealed to prove that Asa is not the Messiah that we’re looking for and is meant to point us to Christ, the man after God’s own heart, one greater than David who can and will lead his people into an everlasting rest based upon his faithfulness. Thus, whether we are climbing a mountain right now enjoying a spiritual high and sensing the closeness of the Lord or else barely crawling in the wilderness of faithlessness, it is not to fallen men that we are to look, not even to ourselves. We all are capable of walking away from the Lord at any time. Therefore, it behooves us to humble ourselves before the Lord, to cry out to Him for grace and revival and to take courage in the faithfulness of God’s promise that if we seek the Lord, he will be found by us. So, let us take courage this morning and seek the Lord with all our heart.