SHOWING OFF
Friday, May 18, 2012 at 9:38AM The fear of God came on all the surrounding kingdoms when they heard how the LORD had fought against the enemies of Israel. —2 Chronicles 20:29
Route 66 Highlight of the Week: Jehoshaphat had a problem—he was surrounded and outnumbered. Technically, I guess that’s two problems—so he was understandably alarmed. But that’s not all he was. The passage tells us that he was also resolved—“to enquire of the LORD, and he proclaimed a fast for all Judah.” He sought what all of us seek, a resolution to one of those “we’re not going to survive the day unless God intervenes”-sized dilemmas. But as the story evolves, we discover when God provided the resolution (a pretty impressive one, I might add), it wasn’t so that the Judeans could simply return to their relatively comfortable lives.
Our desire to resolve our dilemmas is very shortsighted—we usually just want the difficulty to go away. But God delivers us for the same reason that He delivered them—to reach the people surrounding us who are watching our demonstration of faith, to help them recognize how great a God we serve. So your much-anticipated resolution will not just be about a loving God showing His love to you, it will be about a loving God showing off His love to those who surround you. Our job is to connect our crises to the Gospel—and the line that connects those dots reveals the depth of our theology—not just understanding Who God is, but what He’s trying to ultimately accomplish.