Archive for June 1999
Unhappily ever after
Knowing God is a lifelong pursuit
© Angel’s orginal . Written April 1999
Published in The Singapore NavNews June-August 1999
For thirty-five years, he did what was right in God’s eyes. King Asa went on an aggressive campaign to reform the idolatrous practises of his forefathers. No respecter of persons, he even deposed his grandmother, destroying completely the repulsive idols that she had built. He made it law that all Judah would seek and obey God.
When the Egyptians came up against Judah, Asa relied solely on the Lord although he had a fine army of half a million “mighty men of valour.” God gave him victory and though he was greatly outnumbered, they returned from war with great plunder. He took courage in the exhortation of the prophet Azariah and continued the good work that he had begun, repairing the temple of God.
There had always been civil war between Israel in Asa’s story the north and Judah in the south, but Asa proved to be a good king so that many tribes from the north sought refuge under him. In the fifteenth year of his reign, he led the entire southern nation into a covenant to seek the Lord with all their heart and soul. Under his able leadership, Judah experienced peace throughout the land the Lord prospered them.
Then something tragic happened in the thirty-sixth year of his reign: Asa defected from his faith. King Baasha of Israel in the north warred against him. Instead of seeking God as he had done all his life, Asa made a treaty with Ben-Hadad, king of Syria. Asa’s plan to ally with the enemy of his enemy was clever and successful.
Asa bribed Ben-Hadad with the very treasures he had once dedicated to the Lord. He thus sacrificed the blessings of God in exchange for an alliance with a pagan king. Later, enraged at the rebuke of the seer Hanani for his folly, Asa imprisioned him and even brutally oppressed some of the people.
In his thirty-ninth year, Asa was afflicted with a severe disease in his feet. Even when ” his disease was exceedingly great yet he sought not the Lord, but to the physicians.” Asa died in the forty-first year of his reign.
- 2 Chronicles 14-15, KJV -
Knowing God is a Lifelong Pursuit
Asa’s story disturbs my complacency. For thirty-five long years Asa walked with God. Asa was no adolescent believer – He accomplished great things for God one after another. One could weep at the tragic conclusion of his life story. How could someone with such a track record of great achievements through God’s enabling fall so badly? Asa’s story reminds me that knowing God is a lifelong pursuit.
Two hundred years after the time of Asa, Jeremiah the prophet made reference to a pit explaining that it was dug by Asa ” for fear of Baasha king of Israe ” (Jeremiah 41:9, KJV). Somewhere along the way, Asa lost sight of his precious encounters with the Lord and exchanged his fear of God for his fear of man.
A. W. Tozer in his book, “The Pursuit of God” writes, ” It is inherent in personality to be able to know other personalities, but full knowledge of one personality by another cannot be achieved in one encounter. It is only after long and loving mental intercourse that the full possibility of both can be explored. “
It would take us a lifetime and more and still we would not even begin to touch the limits of the greatness of God (Isaiah 40:12-26; Job 38-41). Sadly, we are far too contented with the little we know of God. Knowing God does not come cheaply or flippantly. In reality, it takes a marathon and not a sprint to do so. We can start well and then like Asa not finish well.
God Wants Us To Know Him
He desires intimacy with us. He took the initiative. We can know God only because He has first chosen to be made knowable by us. He has revealed Himself in many and varied ways: through creation, the prophets, our conscience, the inspired word and finally through the incarnated person of Christ. His sensurround revelation shows me how “desperately” He wants me to know Him. At the heart of our pursuit of God is His pursuit of us.
Know God For Who He Is, Not For Who We Think He Is
His first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me ” (Exodus 20:3) demands that we fashion no graven images of God that we can venerate. Less overt but more perilous however are the wrong ideas that we entertain in our minds about God. They are, “…not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow they are themselves idolatrous,” says Tozer. These wrong ideas are direct affronts to God because we who are made in His image in essence exchange the true and living God for one we make in our image. In doing so, we think less of God than He truly is. God does not want to be misunderstood.
Knowing God In Bad and Good Times
Two prophets spoke to Asa in his time: Azariah in good times and Hanani in the bad. After Asa’s great victory over the Egyptians, Azariah said, “…For a long time Israel was without the true God, without a priest to teach and without the law. But in their distress they turned to the L ORD, the God of Israel, and sought Him and He was found by them, ” (2 Chronicles 15:3-4). He reminded Asa that it was God who had given them victory and peace from the many years of unrest because they called on Him.
These words encouraged Asa to continue his pursuit of God and in his fifteenth year, he led the people to return to the Mosaic covenant “…to seek the LORD. with all their head and soul’ (verse 12). The entire nation of Judah swore this “. wholeheartedly . They sought God eagerly , and He was found by them.” (verse 15).
As in the days of Asa, the crucible of suffering often naturally drives us home to seek God.
Knowing God Is To Recognise Him As Our Source of Life
This seeking heart however needs to be cultivated all the more in good times. A time of peace, accomplishing great things for God and recalling past victories must not give way to complacency in our pursuit of knowing God. How easy it is to forget that God is our source of life when times are good. A few years of experiences, no matter how many that may be, cannot exhaust the limits of His mysterious nature. For a good twenty years, “there was no more war until the thirty-fifth year of Asa’s reign” (Verse 19). Tragically in the thirty-sixth year of his reign, just five year before the end of his life, Asa gave way to his fear of a man.
Knowing God Is To Trust Him Completely and Wholeheartedly
The seer Hanani rebuked Asa, “For the eyes of the L ORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.” (2 Chronicles 16:9a, KJV). The Hebrew word shalem meaning “whole” is also translated “perfect” (KJV), “completely” (NASB) or “fully committed” (NIV). Twenty years earlier, the entire nation had been wholehearted in their pursuit of knowing God. Now, they had become spiritually lethargic and complacent.
The apostle Paul reminds us that ” these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us… ” (1 Corinthians 10:11 a)
May we echo with Tozer his heart felt longing:
“O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more.
I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. 0 God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longings; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so
I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul,
‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
