It Makes No Difference

II Chronicles 14

“Asa [King of Judah] had an army of 300,000 men out of Judah…and 280,000 out of Benjamin…There came out against Judah Zerah the Ethiopian with a host of a million [that is, too many to count] …Asa cried to the Lord his God, O Lord, there is none besides You to help, and it makes no difference to You whether the one You help is mighty or powerless. Help us, O Lord our God! For we rely on You, and we go against this multitude in Your name. O Lord, You are our God; let no man prevail against You! So the Lord smote the Ethiopians before Asa and Judah, and the Ethiopians fled”  II Chronicles 14:8-12, selected parts.

 

 

I love the Old Testament. There’s something about the utter dependence and ignorance of the people in Old Testament Israel that I resonate with. They had a huge disadvantage from us, sure, because of several things. For one, they didn’t have the permanency of the Holy Spirit- no inner guide. They didn’t have the level of individual belief and subsequent works like we do today; it was much more communal worship and belief. Sadly, if a King went astray, odds were good the entire nation fell as well, or likely God took vengeance on the nation because the leader acted wickedly and many followed. Jews lacked individual purpose and direction for the most part and relied very heavily on prophets to point them in God’s direction and the King to point them in everyday life directions.  But the more Israel and Judah went astray, the fewer prophets were around to be called upon for guidance.

But I love the fact that even in the Old Testament some people understood the fact that God desired intimate communion and communication with them. He desired praise and reliance; He desired to be a merciful and all-powerful God to His beloved people. But He demanded obedience and undivided hearts. Asa wasn’t a perfect king, but he did a lot of good for the kingdom. He had a lot of soldiers in this scene and I bet he thought he was prepared for most fights. When he heard about the number of Ethiopians however, he quickly changed his tune. Fear crept in. The Hebrew word for million here means the Ethiopians had so many soldiers you couldn’t count them all. At least double for sure, probably a lot more than that. Judah was way, way up a creek and in trouble.

Then Asa cried to the Lord his God, O Lord, there is none besides You to help, and it makes no difference to You whether the one You help is mighty or powerless. This mighty king, reigning over all in his land, humbled himself and cried before the Lord. And in his cry he acknowledged a rather odd fact to me. We often limit God’s power to the logical. We rationalize situations and talk to God once we have an agenda and game plan that makes the most sense. We bring order back to our chaos and then inform God through prayer what we wish. And while God clearly does desire for us to pray boldly He also doesn’t need permission or guidance on how to handle anything. He has ultimate power and authority over everything, absolutely everything. He doesn’t care even a tiny little sliver what the situation looks like. If He wants to bring something about, He can. That idea is striking to me- it makes no difference to God whether the person He helps is mighty or powerless; if it did, it would mean God has a limit on His power.

We can’t explain away our issues or problem solve enough to figure out a successful life. Successful lives are built on a Godly foundation where He leads and guides. He doesn’t care if you’re mighty or powerless; He can and will use you exactly how He made you. We just have to trust with every part of our beings that God will fight for us if we rely completely on Him. And the ways we fall short, as we so often will, may we pray that God would intercede and increase our faith to believe He can and He will.