The Power to Help or Overthrow

Reading in my Bible this morning, a verse in the 25th chapter of 2 Chronicles stood out for my heart.

“Even if you go and fight courageously in battle, God will overthrow you before the enemy, for God has the power to help or to overthrow.” [vs.8]

This spoke so much truth into my life and I believe there is truth for all of us in it.

Our 20 year old son (before he turned 20, smiles) was talking to me one day before he came home from college for the summer. We were discussing all the things his dad and I have tried to do in order to make our situation better (house falling apart, finances extremely tight, need for a return to routine/structure and on it goes) and he said:

“It isn’t what you are doing. There is NO way either of you can do MORE than you are already doing. You are literally doing everything you can. You just need to change some things around and look to God and let HIM help.”
Wise kid.

You see what I mean, though? We can fight courageously as the Scripture says… work harder… try more… and more on those never-ending lines. It is STILL up to GOD’S power to help us or overthrow.

If we are in line with His Word and following Him in all of our lives. . . I believe with all of my heart the Bible is clear that He’ll help us.
This doesn’t mean we’ll always have help the way we expect it but He is a Lord of HELP and has been from the start.

The Scriptures I read before verse 8 - shared that King Amaziah hired men from Israel to fight and had already paid them wages when he was warned to not use them.

But a man of God came to him and said, “Your Majesty, these troops from Israel must not march with you, for the LORD is not with Israel --- not with any of the people of Ephraim.”
2 Chronicles 25:7

The king’s first reply was about the money he had already paid. He had already invested his money for these men to fight for him.

Amaziah asked the man of God, “But what about the hundred talents I paid for the Israelite troops?”

The response was not to find a wise way to get some other work done for the money. It was actually this:

“The man of God replied, “The LORD can give you much more than that.” 2 Chronicles 25:9

No matter what we are doing. . . matter not what we have already done. . .
God has the POWER to help us and to make up for ANY lack we can possibly have in the process.

All we need to do is follow Him as we’ve read of and heard of and known for so long.
It is all about belief in HIM.
Belief above ourselves.
Belief above our circumstances.
Belief beyond what we see and to what we know in Christ.

I’ll close with some beautiful wisdom God’s Spirit seems to have poured through a man named Matthew Henry in the 1700’s:


He has ways enough to make up the loss to thee; it is below thee to speak of it.
Note, A firm belief of God's all-sufficiency to bear us out in our duty, and to make up all the loss and damage we sustain in his service abundantly to our advantage, will make his yoke very easy and his burden very light.

What is it to trust in God, but to be willing to venture the loss of any thing for him, in confidence of the goodness of the security he gives us that we shall not lose by him, but that whatever we part with for his sake shall be made up to us in kind or kindness.
When we grudge to part with any thing for God and our religion, this should satisfy us, that God is able to give us much more than this. He is just, and he is good, and he is solvent.
If men would but duly consider the inability of all those things to help them to which they have recourse when they forsake God, they would not be such enemies to themselves.
Those that will not persuaded to do well for their souls will justly be given up to their own counsels to do ill for themselves even in their outward affairs.

Matthew Henry’s Commentary on parts of 2 Chronicles 25

Love,
Sandy