Why did Asa not cry out to God when he had that disease in his feet? You would have thought that his sheer agony and the failure of his physicians would have compelled him to turn to God whose power he had seen in the past. The answer is possibly very simple and one that most of us could empathise with. Asa had broken his covenant with God, he had imprisoned a prophet and he had oppressed some of his own people. He would have felt too ashamed to turn to God at this time. He would have doubted God’s willingness to receive him back. The tragic irony of this situation, however, is that there was nothing that God would have wanted more than to be reconciled with Asa and to help him. The story of Asa could have been like the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15). Jesus told this story to show that, no matter how far we stray and no matter what we do, God always desires reconciliation above all. Any parent should empathise with the heart of God here. If your children were lost, the most important thing to you would not be their behaviour in their lostness. You would just want your kids back, and at any cost. This is the heart of God for us always, no matter what we have done. He has paid the ultimate price in Christ to make a way for us to come home to him. God’s will for us is no mystery. He just wants his kids back.
Give yourself to God today.
Read 2 Chronicles 16 again
