Today’s reading: 1 Kings 15; 1 Timothy 3-4
King Asa highlights to me the importance and impact of the spiritual legacy we leave for our children.
1 Kings 15 tells us that, “Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as David his father had done.” He cleaned up a lot of the worship of other gods in his territory and sought to be faithful to God himself. However, for as much as he cleaned up the abhorrent worship in Judah, “the high places were not taken away,” and for as much as he sought to be personally faithful to the Lord, when under threat from Baasha, he turned to the king of Syria for help, rather than trusting in Yahweh.
In the grand scheme of things, these seem like pretty minor “misses,” especially compared to all his faithfulness, but they are still impactful “misses” on his part. Yes, tearing down the organized worship of other gods is a much bigger win than leaving the high places for worship is a loss, no doubt, but it is still leaving an avenue for abhorrent worship practices to continue in Israel. And paying Ben-hadad to attack Baasha was probably more of a political move than active rebellion against Yahweh, but it still further established a precedent of relying on political alliances rather than God for security.
What would have happened though if Asa had been in Solomon’s shoes, following after David, instead of following after Abijam and Rehoboam? He was willing to push back against the flow of spiritual apostasy in Israel, but he was starting at a significant deficit. Asa was raised in a climate that clearly did not value faithfulness to Yahweh, and so was not taught to think about and process his decisions and leadership through the lens of having Yahweh as his God. We know that God promised to protect Israel if they would rely on Him, but Asa tells us what he grew up understanding when he says to Ben-hadad, “Let there be a covenant between me and you, as there was between my father and your father.” Asa had learned to protect his country as a political leader by using political alliances because his father and grandfather had relied on political alliances rather than on God.
In my mind, this kind of example really highlights the importance of taking my own walk with the Lord seriously. We are all starting from a spiritual deficit in at least some ways, but am I making it easier or harder for my children to walk faithfully after the Lord? Am I teaching them, by my words and by my actions, what it looks like to trust God and to prioritize Him in my life? Am I doing what I can to minimize the deficit they are starting from?
I want my kids to follow the Lord better than I have. I want them to make better decisions and have less sin to have to struggle with and work past. I want their decision making and thought processing to be more deeply rooted in the reality of the God we serve. I want them to have radical trust in the power and grace of God as their baseline position to build from throughout their lives. But I know that the more I want this for my children, the more attention I need to pay to these things in my own life to lay for my children as firm of a foundation as possible.
I know my kids will have to make their own decisions about whether or not they want to live their lives in faithfulness to God, and I know that no amount of faithfulness or care on my part can guarantee that none of them will choose to turn away from Him, but what I can control is the starting point my children are working from, and I want to do whatever I can to set them up for a life of eternal purpose in faithfulness to God.
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