Look for a moment at the start of the reign of Hezekiah, King of Judah.<\/p>\n
1 Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he became king… 2 He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done.<\/p>\n
3 In the first month of the first year of his reign, he opened the doors of the temple of the Lord and repaired them. 4 He brought in the priests and the Levites, assembled them in the square on the east side 5 and said: \u201cListen to me, Levites! Consecrate yourselves now and consecrate the temple of the Lord, the God of your ancestors. Remove all defilement from the sanctuary. 6 Our parents were unfaithful; they did evil in the eyes of the Lord our God and forsook him. They turned their faces away from the Lord\u2019s dwelling place and turned their backs on him.<\/p>\n
2 Chronicles 29:1-6 (NIV)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
As we read here we see that Hezekiah recognized that the foundation of his reign was in God. He did not start his reign as some other kings by killing off the competition, running off to war with a neighbor, or enacting a new tax. In the first month of the first year of his reign, he opened the doors to the temple of the Lord. He charged the Levites, who were the caretakers of the temple, to remove the filth and evil that had been done in and to the temple and make it a suitable place of worship of God again.<\/p>\n
He started this process rapidly and intently. If you will read the rest of the chapter you will also see that this quick work was methodically planned out and completed. The end of the chapter says<\/p>\n
Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced at what God had brought about for his people, because it was done so quickly.<\/p>\n
2 Chronicles 29:36 (NIV)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Sometimes we shrink back from what seems too big because we are afraid to fail but, with certainty, not doing the good we should is to fail. Sometimes we shrink back from what is right because we think someone else will do it, but we must carefully listen to and obey the call on our hearts to do what is right. Sometimes we are reactionary instead of methodical, which yields “half baked” results. Hezekiah waited until his time (once he was crowned king) but not any longer than he should (in the first month of the first year of his reign). He had thought through cleansing the temple and reestablishing worship thoroughly and had a clear plan to accomplish this goal. God was working through Hezekiah and he and all the people recognized and rejoiced that God had brought it about quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Look for a moment at the start of the reign of Hezekiah, King of Judah. 1 Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he became king… 2 He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done. 3 In the first month of the first year of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307,"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions\/307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}