{"id":4936,"date":"2023-08-08T08:47:04","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T13:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=4936"},"modified":"2023-08-08T08:47:04","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T13:47:04","slug":"devotional-on-2-chronicles-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-2-chronicles-23\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on 2 Chronicles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 1600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-pw_rgY5XWoc\/Xs_wcMSECgI\/AAAAAAABFIo\/gIjC_VO-NWovNA248Gj1javU4oNxU6z0gCPcBGAsYHg\/s1600\/IMG_20180731_145951.jpg\" width=\"1600\" height=\"900\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2018 &#8211; Sightseeing Acadia National Park and area<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nI was w-w-w-wrong<br \/>\n2 Chronicles 25: But what about all this money \u2013 these tons of silver I have already paid out to hire these men?<br \/>\nThe \u201cchronicler\u201d starts off telling us that Amaziah \u201clives well\u201d and \u201cdoes the right thing\u201d and then begins an accounting of all the foolish blunders he makes. It\u2019s likely that Amaziah handled things just fine until things begin to unravel near the end of his reign. At one point he\u2019s preparing for war. After numbering his army he concludes that he needs more soldiers so he turns to Israel for help, paying a great deal of money to mercenary soldiers to fight on his side. However, the Lord sends word to him that this is a huge mistake. These soldiers won\u2019t be helped by the Lord because they don\u2019t trust in him. Amaziah\u2019s response is reasonable. He wants to know about all the money he\u2019s already spent on these fighters. The man of God reminds him that it\u2019s better to have God\u2019s help than it is to have a bigger army. The king yields, writing off the wages already spent as a bad investment. This account doesn\u2019t earn Amaziah stellar marks, but it does earn him a passing grade. Failure, in this case, would have been throwing good money after bad. The lesson here is one well learned. Those of us who are of a strong will tend to lock our jaws and press on even when it\u2019s more and more apparent that we shouldn\u2019t have started down a certain path in the first place. Our argument is the same one the king used: \u201cI\u2019ve come too far and invested too much to turn back now.\u201d No one believes in perseverance more than I do, but sometimes perseverance is just a flimsy cover up for pride. At some point a heaping helping of humble pie is in order. \u201cI thought I was right and that this would work, but I was wrong.\u201d Write it off and get on with life.<br \/>\nTake Away: Better to write off a loss than to compound the situation by doubling down on a bad decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was w-w-w-wrong 2 Chronicles 25: But what about all this money \u2013 these tons of silver I have already paid out to hire these men? The \u201cchronicler\u201d starts off telling us that Amaziah \u201clives well\u201d and \u201cdoes the right thing\u201d and then begins an accounting of all the foolish blunders he makes. It\u2019s likely [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1477,7],"tags":[40,116,570,668,820,858],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4936"}],"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=4936"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14603,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4936\/revisions\/14603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}