{"id":4807,"date":"2023-06-07T19:55:46","date_gmt":"2023-06-08T00:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=4807"},"modified":"2023-06-07T19:55:46","modified_gmt":"2023-06-08T00:55:46","slug":"devotional-on-2-kings-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-2-kings-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on 2 Kings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 1600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-pnCxj5hXefs\/Xn9X_M6lrLI\/AAAAAAABEYU\/Hk6eXDvl1DcZ4UjnTpadF1IbWfy_JZ_CACKgBGAsYHg\/s1600\/20170823_103231.jpg\" width=\"1600\" height=\"900\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2017 &#8211; Badlands National Park, SD<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nNothing special, just life<br \/>\n2Kings 15: He was king for fifty-two years in Jerusalem.<br \/>\nThe stories of the twin kingdoms are told in parallel but they\u2019re very different stories. Judah is rather stable with kings generally ranked as \u201cgood with some failures\u201d while kings of Israel receive failing marks. Because of that, God blesses Judah with consistency of leadership that\u2019s lacking in Israel. In fact, Israel\u2019s throne at this time has the feel of a revolving door. There are numerous assassinations and one fellow, Shallum, only manages to hold the throne for a month. Meanwhile, Azariah and his son Jotham, rule Judah for 68 years. Judah isn\u2019t perfect, but there\u2019s a spiritual, God-connected element that\u2019s missing from Israel and during this period of their histories one place we see it is in the stories of their kings. While intrigue and subterfuge make for the best stories, I think most citizens will say that peace, security, and prosperity make for the best lives. Israel might be more often talked about in the region but Judah\u2019s the better place to call home. Thank God for the blessing of living, more often than not, a life that doesn\u2019t make the headlines.<br \/>\nTake Away: We tend to take common, day to day life for granted; but we shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nothing special, just life 2Kings 15: He was king for fifty-two years in Jerusalem. The stories of the twin kingdoms are told in parallel but they\u2019re very different stories. Judah is rather stable with kings generally ranked as \u201cgood with some failures\u201d while kings of Israel receive failing marks. Because of that, God blesses Judah [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1479,7],"tags":[117,668,812,962,1035],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4807"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4807"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14489,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4807\/revisions\/14489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}