What we want to do today, is talk to you out of one of the wonderful Old Testament stories because those stories give us these great mental pictures as we read them. And we are going to give you one today from King Jehoshaphat who was the leader over Judah when they were threatened by enemy armies and what he did. And we are going to look at this because Paul said this in Romans.
For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. Romans 15:4
There are examples that are in Old Testament stories that actually provide us with a template or pattern for how to think. And we believe that there are many things right here in this story that we can, as parents, observe, and demonstrate to our children. Actually Jodie and I have had success in our family by applying some of these behaviors to our parenting. How many people know its not just when you hear what God has to say, but when you actually do it, that transformation occurs?
The story begins in 2 Chronicles 20. The first two verses kind of outline the threats that Judah is up against and verse three is Jehoshaphat’s response.
3 And Jehoshaphat feared, and set himself to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.
So Jehoshaphat is afraid (we have a whole other post on fear and how to handle it), HE SETS HIMSELF TO SEEK THE LORD. and he proclaimed a fast all throughout Judah.
4 So Judah gathered together to ask help from the Lord; and from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord. 5 Then Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord, before the new court, 6 and said:“O Lord God of our fathers, are You not God in heaven, and do You not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations, and in Your hand is there not power and might, so that no one is able to withstand You? 7 Are You not our God, who drove out the inhabitants of this land before Your people Israel, and gave it to the descendants of Abraham Your friend forever?
He begins to pray for God to intervene in the situation. He goes on in verse 12 to say we don’t know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.
He starts off by setting his face to seek the Lord and he ends it with “our eyes are on You.” Then in verse 13 it says this.
13 Now all Judah, with their little ones, their wives, and their children, stood before the Lord.
Heres the first thing that we want to stop and take a look at. Notice entire families stood before the Lord. We remember in our days as new Christians, whenever the Spirit of God would move powerfully in a service, our pastor would actually instruct all the parents, “Go get your children. Get them out of the nursery, bring them in here” because they wanted to expose the children to the anointing…to that manifest presence of God. And without knowing exactly why, we ran to get the kids. Now we know how valuable it is that we make whatever adjustments are necessary so that our children can become exposed to the anointing.
Next is this. Obviously, there are several things that we have done in raising our children, that were very very important to us. I think we all want to make sure, as parents, that we do every thing that we know to do to raise them right. But, there’s also other influences that we need to expose them to. Other talents, other skills, teachers, etc…they all have influence, youth pastors, children’s workers. They all have influence in the life of a child. And what we determined very early on in our life after being born again is that we determined that we would expose our children very early on to the Word of God. In the assembly. You might say, “well they don’t understand whats being said.” We say that’s just not true! If they can understand you, they understand everyone else. It’s vital to expose them to the Word of God because the Word of God has all power and it becomes the seed that gets planted into their heart and you’ll be surprised what they retain over long periods of time.
We hear people say, “Well I just don’t remember what I read after I read the Bible. How can I expect my kids to remember?” Well, don’t let that stop you from exposing them. If we were to ask you, “what did you have for lunch last Wednesday, probably you couldn’t tell us but, it still did your body good. Your body still used the calories it still took some nourishment from it. Its similar with the Word of God, our spiritual food. Our spirit needs nourishment as much or more than our bodies. Please don’t mistakenly think that because they don’t immediately recall what they heard, it doesn’t have impact. Their recall isn’t the measure of impact. Here is where the impact is. They were exposed to this seed of God’s nature, found in the Word of God . And too many young people decide they won’t follow God and we believe they make that choice because they don’t understand God’s true nature. If they really understand the love our Heavenly Father has for them, They will follow Him all of their days. And so we always try to keep our children exposed to the Word of God.
