Freely Given
Reading of the Day: 1 Kings 13-15
1 Kings 14:26: And he took away the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king's house; he even took away all: and he took away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made.
After Solomon dies & his sons begin to reign one generation after another, we see that the consequences of Solomon's actions have very devastating and messy effects on the two divided kingdoms. Just because of the fact that the kingdoms are divided make things complicated enough, let alone the unfortunate decisions many of the following kings were making! With the exception of maybe 1 king so far, king Asa, most of the kings served other gods & their hearts were far from The Lord. In one instance, as we see in the above Scripture, Shishak king of Egypt came and took all the treasures out of the house of The Lord! But if you think about it, these things were freely given. Because of the poor judgment & choices of the kings to reign after Solomon, all tribes of Israel were open and vulnerable to the enemy! David gave Solomon rest on every side from war, but now, wars became the way of life once again. The heart posture of Israel was so far from God that they basically gave an open invitation to the enemy. So yes, these treasures were taken physically...but they had already been given up in spirit. The most precious items of love, peace, wisdom & righteousness were gone, and these tangible treasures were just the physical representation of that. How often do we freely give our precious time to things of little importance? We can all be guilty of that at times. Zoning out, tuning out & getting out of things which we know we should be doing for The Lord...but thankfully, The Lord freely gives too! He freely forgives us when we repent & turn back! Sadly, many of these kings did not find their way back to God...but knowing this beautiful Truth of God's freely-given forgiveness, we can! 1 Corinthians 2:12: "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God."
written by
Gina Pietrzak
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