From Chaos to Peace
4 Actionable Steps Inspired by Ahaz and Hezekiah
Brian Dumont
Over the years, I have been able to participate in several different music festivals. Sometimes an event draws only a few hundred, other times it’s thousands of people. Unity Christian Music Festival held late summer in Muskegon, Michigan. The max capacity or the festival is upwards of 18,000 people and is perhaps the biggest Christian music festival in Michigan.
I commented to the director, “This is such a great festival; it is so well organized!”
And he said, “Well, God is a God of order. So, we should reflect that in our execution of what we do here.”
And he’s right! 1 Corinthians 14:33 says, “God is not a God of disorder but a God of peace” (GW).
I want to share with you four things you can do when your life is out of order. God’s Word has the answers we need. So, let’s look at some highlights from 2 Chronicles chapters 28 and 29.
Two Kings: Ahaz and Hezekiah
“Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem sixteen years. He did not do what was pleasing in the sight of the Lord, as his ancestor David had done. Instead, he followed the example of the kings of Israel” (2 Chronicles 28:1 NLT).
The Lord humbled Judah because their king encouraged his people to sin and had been utterly unfaithful to the Lord. “The king took the various articles from the Temple of God and broke them into pieces. He shut the doors of the Lord’s Temple so that no one could worship there, and he set up altars to pagan gods in every corner of Jerusalem. He made pagan shrines in all the towns of Judah for offering sacrifices to other gods. In this way, he aroused the anger of the Lord, the God of his ancestors” (2 Chronicles 28:24-25 NLT).
Let’s look closely at Ahaz’s actions:
- He shut the doors of the Lord’s Temple.
- He removed sacred items from the Lord’s temple; He even destroyed them.
- He encouraged idol worship.
- He angered the Lord.
“When Ahaz died, he was buried in Jerusalem but not in the royal cemetery of the kings of Judah. Then his son Hezekiah became the next king” (2 Chronicles 28:27 NLT).
In Chronicles 29 it says, “Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he became the king of Judah, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. He did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight, just as his ancestor David had done” (2 Chronicles 29:1-2).
In the very first month of his reign Hezekiah:
- Reopened the doors of the Lord’s Temple and repaired it (2 Chronicles 29:3).
- Called the priest to purify themselves and the temple and removed the defiled things from the sanctuary (2 Chronicles 29:4-5).
- Cleansed the temple and restored the sacred items to their rightful place (2 Chronicles 29:18-19).
- Restored worship of Almighty God as a priority.
We can see a pattern in this section of the Old Testament where you have a divided kingdom of Israel with good kings and bad kings. Whenever the bad kings are in charge, the temple is out of order, and everything falls apart. Then you get a good king reigning, and they restore the temple and things go well.
A Symbol of Order and Communication
In the Old Testament, the temple represents the place of communication with God. It’s where the Israelites would go to talk to God. Now, in the New Testament, the Bible says we the Temple of God, and we communicate directly with Him. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, “Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in[a] you? God will destroy anyone who destroys this temple. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple” (NLT).
Have you ever walked up to a vending machine to find it’s out of order? Sometimes that happens in life. Life just does not work the way it is supposed to, and we may not realize why.
We all go through different seasons and phases in our lives. If you ever find yourself in a place in your life where you think, My life is not going the way it should; my life is out of order!
Practical Steps to Restore Order
So what do you do? I think you can go to the Old Testament for that answer.
1. Open the doors of the temple.
When you open those doors, you restore the lines of communication with your Heavenly Father.
- Have you prayed about this?
- Are you reading God’s Word?
- Are you getting that two-way communication with God?
2. Get rid of everything ungodly.
A lot of times that is going to be more of a spiritual thing. You have to ask yourself –
- What am I watching?
- What are you listening to? TV, music, other voices or other people?
What you listen to will determine what you speak. What you speak will determine what you believe. What you believe will determine your choices. And what you choose determines the condition of your life.
If you really want to get to know somebody, ask them to share their top five favorite movies, artists, songs or something like that. When they start to share about what they like, you will get an idea of what is going on in their heart, which also determines what is coming out of them as well.
What We Let In
If your life’s out of order, maybe you need to review what you are allowing into your life.
3. Keep the good stuff.
My wife is a big fan of the home improvement TV shows. They bring professional designers in to remodel the house, but before they could do that, they had to literally take everything out of the house because people would have so much clutter just from years of life stacking up. And so they would take it all out to the yard, and sort it all into three piles: the keep pile, the trash pile and the sale/donate pile.
So, you get it – get rid of the ungodly. Take it all out; sort the good from the bad and only keep the good stuff.
4. Make worship a priority.
When you want to introduce God’s presence into your life, you have to create this environment. But when you are in God’s presence that opens the door for the miraculous to happen.
“But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel” (Psalm 22:3 KJV).
You have got to make sure that you are maintaining a healthy environment there.
Worship has to be genuine.
My pastor used to say, “If you want to make changes, you have to start from within. Nobody can go to the bathroom for you. You have to get rid of your own poop.”
I have always thought of the spiritual applications in this, and for the first time this year I wondered if there is a physical application to this.
A Journey to Balance
I will be a little bit vulnerable here for a minute. About a year ago, I went to the doctor for my annual checkup, and she said, “Your blood pressure is a little high.” It’s always been a little high – something I inherited. But she said, “No, it is it is higher than it should be!”
I started monitoring it at home, and it was getting up to where it was regularly an unhealthily high. She said, “Let’s stop, look at your diet, your medications and get rid of all the stuff that should not be in your body. And let’s make sure you are only putting good stuff in.”
My physical body, on some levels, was out of order. I needed to get the bad stuff out and make sure the good stuff was in there. I am doing great now, just for the record
We all can have seasons where things just don’t seem to be going right. When we take a step back, maybe take a pause to make sure that we’re communicating with the Lord. How often do we forget to pray about our own challenges? Right? We pray for other people all the time.
I hope this blog encourages you to be able to take some action when the challenges come or when your life seems out of order. Remember to open the doors of communication, get the bad stuff out, keep the good stuff in and make sure that worship is a priority.
Brian Dumont, Regional Promotions Manager, Family Life Radio
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