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courageous and uncompromised

2 Chronicles 15:1-19

2 Chronicles 15:1 The Breath of God came on Azariah son of Oded.
2 Chronicles 15:2 So he went to meet Asa and said, “Asa and all Judah and Benjamin, hear me. Yahveh is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you abandon him, he will abandon you.
2 Chronicles 15:3 For many years Israel has been without the true God, without a teaching priest, and without instruction,
2 Chronicles 15:4 but when they turned to Yahveh God of Israel in their distress and sought him, he was found by them.
2 Chronicles 15:5 In those times there was no peace for those who went about their daily activities because the residents of the lands had many conflicts.
2 Chronicles 15:6 Nation was crushed by nation and city by city, for God troubled them with every possible distress.
2 Chronicles 15:7 But as for you, be strong; don’t give up, because your work has a reward.”
2 Chronicles 15:8 When Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Azariah son of Oded the prophet, he took courage and removed the abhorrent idols from the whole land of Judah and Benjamin and from the cities he had captured in the hill country of Ephraim. He renovated the altar of Yahveh that was in front of the portico of Yahveh’s temple.
2 Chronicles 15:9 Then he gathered all Judah and Benjamin, as well as those from the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon who were residing among them, because they had defected to him from Israel in great numbers when they saw that Yahveh his God was with him.
2 Chronicles 15:10 They were gathered in Jerusalem in the third month of the fifteenth year of Asa’s reign.
2 Chronicles 15:11 At that time they sacrificed to Yahveh seven hundred cattle and seven thousand sheep and goats from all the plunder they had brought.
2 Chronicles 15:12 Then they entered into a covenant to seek Yahveh God of their ancestors with all their heart and all their soul.
2 Chronicles 15:13 Whoever would not seek Yahveh God of Israel would be put to death, young or old, man or woman.
2 Chronicles 15:14 They took an oath to Yahveh in a loud voice, with shouting, with trumpets, and with rams’ horns.
2 Chronicles 15:15 All Judah rejoiced over the oath, for they had sworn it with all their mind. They had sought him with all their heart, and he was found by them. So, Yahveh gave them rest on every side.
2 Chronicles 15:16 King Asa also removed Maacah, his grandmother, from being queen mother because she had made an obscene image of Asherah. Asa chopped down her obscene image, then crushed it and burned it in the Kidron Valley.
2 Chronicles 15:17 The high places were not taken away from Israel; nevertheless, Asa was wholeheartedly devoted his entire life.
2 Chronicles 15:18 He brought his father’s consecrated gifts and his own consecrated gifts into God’s temple: silver, gold, and utensils.
2 Chronicles 15:19 There was no war until the thirty-fifth year of Asa’s reign.

courageous and uncompromised

It takes courage to do what is right consistently. In Asa’s day – as in our own – it seems so easy to let certain wrongs committed by influential people to slide. Asa and his kingdom saw peace for years because he was not willing to compromise. He even deposed his own mother because of her idolatrous acts.

LORD, make us courageous and uncompromised – people who reflect your holiness.