Relying on God

Welcome to our Women's Bible Study on 1st and 2nd Kings. This is part two, entitled Learning from Leaders, What We Learned from Kings, Queens, and Prophets. And today we're gonna cover chapters 14 through 16, spending most of our time on the reign of King Asa, because his life teaches us so much about our lives, from the excitement of first surrendering our life to the Lord, all the way to the temptations that we have to kick back and think, now I'll do things my own way. And so that's what's coming up. Last week, we surveyed the whole division of God's people from the unity that they had enjoyed under King David and under Solomon, and now they became two nations under Rehoboam and Jeroboam, who sound like twins, but remember, they were no relation at all. They just happened to have names that sounded familiar. We mostly studied Jeroboam's rule in the north, and now in the middle of chapter 14, where I started your week two Bible study, the narrative goes back to Jeroboam in Judah. So we're picking up in 1st Kings chapter 14, verse 21, that tells us, now Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, reigned in Judah. He was 41 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 17 years in Jerusalem. Now I want you to pay attention to this next phrase. In Jerusalem, the city that the Lord had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel to put his name there. Just kind of remember that. And it tells us that his mother's name was Naama, the Ammonite, okay? And so we're given an alert here that there is cause and effect in life. Solomon, the dad here of Rehoboam, Solomon had liked to make collections, and he liked to collect wives. Solomon tended to collect wives from all the nations among whom God had said don't do it. And so in order to please his wives, Solomon established these places for them to sacrifice as they were accustomed to in the nations that they came out of. And so he gave them a place to worship the evil principalities that present themselves as gods. Specifically in this case, it told us in the text that it was Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites, in order to please Naama, the Ammonite, okay? This is Rehoboam's mother. So what is the effect of someone having a mother that is from the Ammonites and has worshiped this abomination? We read in verse 22, therefore Judah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins that they committed more than all their fathers had done. For they also, also just the same as Israel, they also built for themselves high places and pillars and ashram on every high hill and under every green tree. And there were also male cult prostitutes, which is just as bad as it sounds, in the land. And they did according to all the abominations of the nations that the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. So the cause and effect here that we see is that Solomon was the one that had put out the welcome mat for these evil principalities. But Rehoboam was the one that opened the door and welcomed them to pretty much come and take over. Another effect is that we see that merely one generation after Solomon had built this magnificent house of the Lord, we read in our text that Shishak from Egypt came and took away a whole bunch of the stuff. He just came in and sort of purged the house. So now here we are, both Israel and Judah are both worshiping these demon gods, and so you'd think they'd be on the same team. Oh no, it says in verse 30, there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually. So on we go here now from the first two kings who split the kingdom into two parts. Now in your study guide on page four and five, I made a chart that you are filling in, you've begun filling in, you will continue to fill in with the kings as they're presented to us. But I decided also this week to sort of add a weekly chart that I'm gonna put on, in fact, we'll put it on the screen right now, a weekly chart that's gonna show us the specific kings and timeframes that we're covering just that particular week. So this is the chart for week two. These are the two, and you can snap a picture of this if you want to, but these are the time periods that we're covering and these are the different kings. And you notice during your study that when each king is introduced, he is usually dated in connection with the opposing king. And so it will kind of give us a dating that way. So I tried to line them up in that way and it begins in chapter 15. All right, verse one. Now in the 18th year of King Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, Abijam began to reign over Judah and he reigned for three years in Jerusalem, which didn't give him enough time to do much that was notable except to war against his northern family. But the main point that the author wants us to know starts in verse four. And that is when he says, nevertheless, for David's sake, the Lord his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, setting up his son after him and establishing Jerusalem. Why did he do that? Because of what we just read. It is the city that the Lord had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel to put his name there. It was his choice. And the next verse says, because David did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and he did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. I love that one exception. And so the idea here that the author wants us to see is that God keeps his promises. Okay, that is what's reinforced for us. It is very rare in these days for a family to remain in power for more than like two generations. It's probably rare in our days in a country. But that is what God promised to David when he said, I will give you a lamp in Jerusalem. It will be a continuing dynasty. And we're gonna come back to that idea of how rare it is a little bit later in our lesson. But it's the life of Asa. This is our sweet spot for today. It's the life of Asa that we really wanna spend our time on. And it starts in verse nine. In the 20th year of Jeroboam, king of Israel, Asa began to reign over Judah. He reigned 41 years in Jerusalem, which according to my personal chart that I've been doing, it's like the third longest reign in all of the kings of Judah. Verse 11, Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. As David, his father had done. Here's what he did right. He put away the male cult prostitutes. Yay, out of the land. And he removed all the idols that his father had made. He also removed Mayaka, his mother, from being queen mother because she had made an abominable image for Asherah. And Asa cut down her image and burned it at the Brook Kidron. But the high places were not taken away. Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was wholly true to the Lord all of his days. And right there between verse 14 and 15 is a whole big life of Asa that is missing for us in the narrative in 1 Kings. But we do have information from 2 Chronicles, and that's why I sent us there in the study guide. Now, Kings and Chronicles are fairly parallel accounts, except that Chronicles focuses on the lineage of David, this lamp in Jerusalem. Chronicles is all about anyone from the line of David, the city of Jerusalem, or the temple itself. And so it often gives us a very much more robust picture of some of those kings. And that's the case with Asa. What I wanna do is I want to look at the life of Asa, and I'm gonna call it the spiritual life cycle of Asa. And I've made five points, and I'm gonna put them on the screen one at a time, because I think that we're going to find that the spiritual life cycle of Asa bears a shocking resemblance to the spiritual life cycle of every one of us. So we're gonna begin with the first point in his life cycle, and that is the general rest and peace that comes from knowing God. Let's see. Now, we're in 2 Chronicles 14, verse one. You can turn in your Bibles there, or you can just listen if you want to. But we're in Chronicles now, looking at Asa. And it says in 14.1, Abijah, which is named Abijam in 1 Kings, he slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David. And Asa, his son, reigned in his place. In his days, the land had rest for 10 years. Why? Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. We just read all the good things that he did in 1st Kings, how he honored the Lord and the things that he did. Verse 4, he commanded Judah to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, to keep the law and the commandment. And then you read the rest of that passage that connected the idea with doing what is right and obeying God with peace and rest. In fact in that passage we see peace and rest mentioned five times because Asa was doing these things. And he understood, Asa understood that walking in the rest of the Lord, well he was even able to tell people what what this was doing for them. Look in the middle of verse 7, he said to the people, the land is ours because we've sought the Lord our God. We've sought him and he's given us peace on every side. So they were able to build, they were able to prosper, and I want you to note even the size of the army in verse 8. Asa had an army of 300,000 from Judah, 280,000 men from Benjamin. If you add that up pretty quickly you got over a half million people in your army. Just hold that for a minute, that idea. Now what I want to do is look at our own lives and say, is this not true of our own spiritual lives as well? This general peace and rest that comes when we first know God. Especially if you got saved as an adult and maybe you had some time to live in a state of unrest and you come to know the Lord, you surrender your life to the Lord, you accept him, and now the peace with God that you have is something that you didn't realize before and you do have a general rest. Not everything is perfect in your life but you do understand that you have peace with God and we have that experience. God gives us the ability to do the things then that he has called us to do and this brings us to the second part of our lifestyle or the life cycle I should say and that's the introduction of challenges in order that we might learn to trust God anymore. So we accept God, we have a sense of spiritual peace, and now the Lord allows this introduction of challenges, trials, troubles into our life in order that we might be able to trust him more. Let's look and see what this looked like in Asa's life. In verse 9 here comes Zerah the Ethiopian with a million men and 300 chariots. Okay, he's outnumbered twice as many, right? Asa has 580,000. Here's a million men plus these chariots and he wasn't up to anything good. Now remember, Egypt had already come in and taken a whole bunch of stuff out of the temple and so I guess word was getting out that the perception was Jerusalem is unprotected, go, and so all the countries are starting to get in on the action or something. But here's the point, what was Asa's response to the trouble? His response was prayer. Look at verse 11, Asa cried to the Lord, O Lord, there's none like you to help between the mighty and the weak. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on you. If you haven't underlined those four words in your Bible, in fact that's the title of this message, Relying on God. He says we rely on you and in your name we've come against this multitude. O Lord, you are our God, let not man prevail against you. And what was God's response? Help, intervention. Verse 12, the Lord defeated the Ethiopians before Asa and before Judah and the Ethiopians fled. Judah was able to chase them a long way, gather up a whole bunch of spoils, and bring it all the way back to Jerusalem. And this is true of our lives as well, that when we know God, he allows challenges in our life. He doesn't keep us bubble-wrapped so that nothing will ever affect us, but the challenges that we face are intended to show his strength. And this response here of Asa to go to God and say, okay, I'm in trouble, this is not looking good, I rely on you. I am counting on you because you are the God who saves. And that's a reminder for us that that should be our response as well. God does not allow challenges into our lives so that we'll be all smart and figure out how we're gonna solve them, but that we might rely on him and tell him so. And so, you know, maybe you're facing a challenge right now, you're at this point, and maybe it's finances, maybe you have a difference of opinion between your husband and yourself, or between someone else, yourself, maybe you're facing a move, some kind of a challenge in your life, not enough money to meet the end of the month, whatever the challenge is. This is what the Lord delights in, is somebody that says, Lord, we rely on you, we come to you. And not just inside thinking, thinking it in my heart, well I'm just gonna trust God, but telling him, telling him in prayer, I rely on you, look at my problem, you're bigger than my problem. In fact, maybe you need to write out verse 11 and write it out on a card so that you have a script to go by, that's kind of useful. The third part of the spiritual life cycle here is the danger zone, after trusting God and experiencing victory. And God actually sent a prophet to Asa to warn him about the danger, when we do face a trial, we do reach out to God, God does do something for us, then there's a little bit of a danger zone after that. Look at this, we're in chapter 15 now, verse 1, the Spirit of God came upon Azariah, the son of Oded, and this is a man with a prophetic message, so I'll call him a prophet, and he went out to meet Asa, and here's what he said, he said, hear me Asa and all Judah and Benjamin, the Lord is with you while you are with him, if you seek him he will be found by you, but if you forsake him he will forsake you. Now this is such an important message because when God sends challenges to build our faith, and we do trust him, and we overcome those challenges, the Lord overcomes those challenges, it can be so tempting for us to just back off then and say, oh good, it all worked out, but what this prophet was saying to Asa is this is repeatable, you can put this on repeat, you can do this for the next trial, and the next challenge that comes your way, and when he says here, if you seek him he will be found by you, if you continue to seek him, if you keep seeking him, he will be found by you, and when it says, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you, that's not punishment, that's just God letting you have your way, okay, if you don't seek him, God will let you have your way, because he does, he just lets us have our way most of the time, and so Azariah's message here was explaining, and here's another point on our spiritual life cycle, the necessity to keep seeking God, and to keep relying on him, again, this is cause and effect, this isn't punishment, if you keep seeking him, he will be found, this is a promise, God will be found if we continue to press in, so victory in our challenges as well are repeatable, we can repeat this over and over, the key is in continuing, continuing to seek the Lord. Well, in our text, the prophet went on to give this little history lesson, and then he ended with a really important message for the moment, he said in verse 7 to Asa, but you take courage, do not let your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded, and Asa did take courage, he listened carefully to what Azariah had said, he honored what he said, and he responded to that message from the Lord with his actions, with his lifestyle, and with doing the work that God had called him to do, and it tells us here what he did, in the middle of verse 8, he put away the detestable idols from all the land of Judah and Benjamin, he repaired the altar of the Lord that was in front of the vestibule of the house of the Lord, and all of this had been happening in the 15th year of his reign, okay, and I want to mention a couple points of interest that we have in the text, do you remember last week that I said what had happened with some of the Levites up in the north when Jeroboam made the two golden calves, and was like tweaking all the worship, and they were Levites, they were supposed to be serving the Lord, and they said we are out of here, and they had migrated down to Judah, well a whole bunch of other people did as well, and the texts tell us people from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon, the middle of verse 9, for great numbers had deserted to him, from Israel when they saw that the Lord, his God, was with him. And this reminds us that our faith is contagious. When people see that the Lord is with us, there is a contagious aspect to that. In this text, people migrated because, look, the Lord is with Asa, we're going to go join that team because we see what's going on. To some degree, the same thing happens in our lives. When we rely on the Lord, and the Lord gives us victory, and even if we have to wait a long time for that victory, but we continue to rely on the Lord, people notice. And they are attracted to that. Also in verse 11, they sacrificed to the Lord from the spoil that they'd brought, 700 oxen, 7,000 sheep, and they entered into a covenant. This is all the people now. They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and with all their soul, and to cut off those who would not seek the Lord. Uh-oh, that sounds very cruel. Cut off those who would not seek the Lord? On the surface, that sounds like, well, that's not very Christian of them to do that, but really think about what's happening here. What is happening? Those who were opposing seeking the Lord means they were likely promoting, serving the evil principalities that presented themselves as gods, and so that was not going to work because you can't have participation in that way. And it reminds us here, even Maacah, this is verse 16, his mother, King Asa, removed from being queen mother. That must have been hard because she had made a detestable image for Asherah. Asa cut down her image, crushed it, and burned it at the Brook Kidron. This was hard. This was speaking the truth in love. It's like, if you want to hang on to demon gods from Ammon, maybe go there then, but it can't be here. It can't be in our home. It can't be in Israel. And there's probably some applications for someone listening to this as well of that tough love of standing firm and saying this cannot be in our home. This is our home. This is where we worship the Lord, and this does not belong here. So one of the two of you has to go. That's tough, right? That's tough stuff. The Lord gave them rest all around, it says in the middle of verse 15, and by the time we get to verse 19, there was no more war until the 35th year of the reign of Asa, 20 years of rest, because Asa had learned how to rely on the Lord. And again, I'll say it one more time, the message for us here, the inspiration for us is to be careful to keep seeking the Lord, to keep trusting the Lord, to keep serving the Lord. Asa did keep serving the Lord until he didn't. Chapter 16, and this is our last point on our spiritual life cycle, and that is the peril of self-reliance. Let's see how it worked out in Asa's life. In the 36th year of the reign of Asa, Baasha, king of Israel, went up against Judah, and he built Ramah that he might permit no one to go out or come in to Asa, king of Judah. So Baasha is the next king that we have in Israel who resumed these hostilities now between the two kingdoms. Now, the last time that Asa had a military problem, it was Zerah from Ethiopia. His choice was to pray. His choice was to seek God, to tell God, I rely on you, would you defend between the strong and the weak, okay? This time, he skipped over the tedium of prayer, and he pulled out his checkbook instead. Verse two, Asa took silver and gold from the treasures of the house of the Lord and the king's house, and he sent them to Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, who lived in Damascus, saying, and I'll paraphrase this, so he goes to the king of Syria, and he goes, would you, could perhaps the silver and gold persuade you to break your covenant with Baasha and establish a covenant with us, and then go back and fight against Baasha so they'll stop fighting against us? Perhaps this money would persuade you to do that. And the king of Syria says, absolutely. Your gold is good here, and that's how it worked. And so Baasha stopped fighting against Asa. It worked. However, God was not part of this equation at all, and so God sent another prophet now to speak to Asa. This is verse seven. At that time, Hanani, the seer, came to Asa, and he said, because, this cause and effect again, because you relied on the king of Syria, did not rely on the Lord, your God, the army of the king of Syria has now escaped you. Look, were not the Ethiopians and the Libyans a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet, because you relied on the Lord in that case, he gave them into your hand. And then the seer is telling him, here's how it works, verse nine. For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth. Why? To give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him. You have done foolishly in this, and from now on you will have wars. What a sobering message. Asa had once known how to rely on the Lord. He probably knew how to rely on the Lord for years and years and years. Remember, 20 years of rest and no war. Did he forget? Did he get lazy? Did he just want to work things out his own way this time? Was it all the above? We don't really know. But one thing we see is, what was Asa's response to the prophet this time? Was he broken by those words that the prophet brought? No, verse 10, it says, Asa was angry with the seer. You know how we say, don't shoot the messenger? He was angry with the messenger and he put him in stocks in prison. And this is a super important reminder and warning to us because we can come to this same place in our own spiritual life cycle. Do we get lazy? Do we forget to rely on the Lord? Do we just want to work this one out the way we want it to go? Or maybe do we finally have some resources in life that we never had before? Hey, look, I can remember in the 90s, in our family, there was no other opportunity for anything to happen than to cry out to the Lord. There was no money, okay? That's not my life right now. And for many of us who have grown up and get to the age that I am, it's like, yeah, you have some resources, either financial or wisdom or practical. It's like, yeah, I've done that before. I've met this problem before. Problem C, we've solved it this way. And we just kind of like, I know how to do this. It's a temptation. This is the peril of relying on ourselves. And it comes to all of us at some time. Three years later, the final challenge came, and this time it was personal. Verse 12, in the 39th year of the reign, Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe. Yet even in his disease, he did not seek the Lord, but he sought help from physicians. This is not teaching us that going to the doctor is the wrong course of action. The point that is being made here is that Asa, because he resisted relying on the Lord, that takes a sense of humility. Then what took over? His pride took over, and he became a prideful man. And he became unreasonably stubborn in this. And he would not seek the Lord, even for his own personal health, his own personal discomfort, but yet he would only go to the physicians. And that is where the peril leads us. And, you know, so I've had to go through this myself, preparing for this lesson. I've had to go through these cycles and say, Lord, where am I? I've had to change a few ways of my thinking. And I think that that's what we all should do. When we look at a character like this, look, we're learning from leaders. This is what we learned from Asa this time. All right, so the rest of the study now, we're going to turn back to 1 Kings chapter 15. And the rest of chapter 15 and 16 gives us sort of a history lesson on the kings of Israel. I'm going to throw up our chart again. Now we're going back to Israel. You know, Asa was in Judah. Now we're going to kind of go down from Jeroboam all the way down to Ahab. And it goes something like this. After Jeroboam, then his son Nadab reigned. You can see him on the chart there. And verse 26 says, He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father and in his sin which he made Israel to sin. He didn't last very long, only two years. And then along came this guy named Bayesha. And it says he was the house of Issachar. So it reminds us, this is not, no relationship, no family line here. He was a different family line. He's not a son of Jeroboam and Nadab. So how did he get to be the king if he wasn't a son? Assassination. That's another way that you can get to be the king. In fact, he killed not only Nadab, but he killed all the house of Jeroboam. And he lasted 24 years. And his epitaph is just the way I said last week that we're gonna read over and over in verse 34. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He walked in the way of Jeroboam and in his sin, which he made Israel to sin. And then Elah, his son, reigned in his place. And he got to be king for two years until one day he was drunk at the bar. And along comes his servant, Zimri, in verse nine. And he came in and killed him. And it tells us that Zimri was the commander of half of the chariots. Now, he wasn't the commander of all the chariots. He only commanded half of the chariots. But still, he killed the king. And so he decided he was gonna be king. And so in verse 12, Zimri destroyed all the house of Baasha. And he must have done it really, really quickly because he only reigned for seven days. So he just went right to work like that. Well, what happened here is that the army who was in the territory of the Philistines heard that Zimri had assassinated the king, made himself king. But remember, he's only the commander of half of the chariots. So they wanted the commander of the army to be the king instead. And so they made Omri king over Israel that day in the camp. So they're in the camp with the army. And they're like, no, we don't like that guy. We're gonna make Omri king. So verse 17, Omri went up from Gibbathon and all Israel with him. And they besieged Tirza. And when Zimri saw that the city was taken, he went into the citadel of the king's house and burned the king's house over him with fire. And he died because of his sins that he committed, doing evil on the side of the Lord, walking in the way of Jeroboam and for his sin, which he committed, making Israel to sin. So you would have thought things would settle down now because, okay, well, now Omri's king. Well, that was the army's idea to make him king. There was other people that wanted this guy named Tibni to be king. And so now there's even more unrest. And in fact, some Bible charts even list Tibni. I've chosen not to list him because I don't think he ever really became king. It was just this unrest that they wanted him to be king. But verse 22, the people who followed Omri overcame the people who followed Tibni. So Tibni died, Omri became the official king. And there is something very notable here that we want to note that he did. In verse 24, he bought the hill of Samaria from Shemar for two talents of silver, and he fortified the hill, and he called the name of the city Samaria after the name of Shemar, the owner of the hill. And this will be the capital now of Israel, of the north for many, many years to come. And of course, all the way into New Testament times, when we find that the Jews would actually go, they had such an aversion to Samaria that they would skirt, they would take the long way around so as not to go through Samaria. When Omri died, he was buried in Samaria and Ahab, his son, reigned in his place. And this gives us a lead-in to next week's lesson. Verse 30, Ahab, the son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord. Look at this, more than all who were before him. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians. And he went and served Baal and worshiped him. Look at this, he erected an altar for Baal and the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. So you can see how Samaria was established to open wide the doors to the evil principalities that presented themselves as gods. And Ahab made an Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. One final footnote we see here is, because this lesson has kind of been teaching us about the importance of many of the cities, Jerusalem, the place that God chose to place his name out of all the cities of Israel, the importance of Samaria. And now it's giving us a footnote about one other city that has an importance, and that's Jericho. And in Joshua chapter six, after the battle of Jericho, I just wanna read to you, it said, Joshua laid an oath, saying, so Jericho's destroyed. And Joshua says, curse before the Lord, be the man who rises up and builds this city, Jericho, at the cost of his firstborn shall he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son shall he set up its gates. And so our text for this week ends in verse 34, telling us that that is exactly what happened. Look at verse 34. In his days, in Ahab's days, that means, Hiel of Bethel built Jericho. He laid its foundation at the cost of Abiram, his firstborn, and he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son, Segub, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke by Joshua, the son of Nun. It just is a reminder that God does what he says he's going to do. And that's what I wanna wrap up, wanna wrap up this lesson with two observations. And the one is that God keeps his promises. This is something we are intended to see here. You can see on the chart that I used here that there have already been four family dynasties in Israel. That's what's normal. That is normal human nature, is when a nation just like, you know, assassinations and coups and this and that. That's typical. I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying it's normal. This is the regular course of events. But what we're gonna find out as we look at the kings of Judah, because God promised David a lamp in Jerusalem, a descendant of David is going to be on the throne all the way through our study. God will keep his promises that David's line will exist all the way to the end. And all this, one guy killing another guy and this and that, you're like, why do we have to read this? This is so, well, think about it this way. It reminds us of the normalcy of human nature. That column, the kings of Israel, that's normal. People killing this and that. But we're gonna see that God keeps his promise and has kept his promise to David throughout the right-hand column there. Second observation, let's circle back to the life of Asa and remind ourselves of the importance of relying on the Lord. Wherever each one of us is at in this spiritual life cycle, the Lord has something to speak to us about relying on the Lord. Whether we're at week one in coming to know the Lord, and finally we have peace with God, or if we're at year 15, or if we're at year 45, or if we're at year 63, wherever we're at, there's something to catch our attention and something for the Holy Spirit to woo us and to just say, I want you to rely on me. I want you to trust me. This is what I've been saying throughout all of my word. I am trustworthy, I do keep my promises. Rely on me in these struggles that you have. Well, next week's lesson is not going to be like this one. We're only gonna have one king, Ahab, and now we're gonna turn to the life of Elijah in the next few chapters. And so we're gonna turn, instead of learning from kings, we're gonna learn from prophets next week, and it's gonna be really good. So Father, thank you for this lesson and thank you for the things that we learn from King Asa. Lord, it's such a rich life that we learn from. And Lord, you have such a gentle way of reminding us and warning us, and I pray that each one of us would take these aspects as that gentle reminder to get back on course in whatever area of our life maybe we have left the course. And Lord, I also pray that you would help us to rely on you for those difficult calls that we need to make, even with our own family members, that bring things into our home, into our family circle, that are not in agreement with you, that we cannot participate in because of you. And Lord, I pray for each one that's facing a situation like that, Lord, that you would give wisdom and discernment, and that you would help each woman to rely on you for how to respond in those situations. So Lord, bless us as we discuss now and bring us back next week, in Jesus' name, amen.