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We are reading through he New Living Translation.
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Clear out the Junk
II Chronicles 29 - 31 and James 4
In James 4:10 we hear these words:
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.
Hezekiah was someone who lived this out. He humbled himself before the Lord. At last, we see in Hezekiah, a good king in Judah. He was a king who sought to humble himself before God. And because of this, God gave him great success. A revival broke out and the nation was restored in worship of the Lord their God - the God of their ancestors. Things went well for Hezekiah because he humbled himself before God.
But humility doesn’t just happen to us. Humility takes some effort on our part. At the beginning of chapter 29, Hezekiah says:
Listen to me, you Levites! Purify yourselves, and purify the Temple of the LORD, the God of your ancestors. Remove all the defiled things from the sanctuary. (II Chron 29:4 NLT)
It took 16 days to clear out all the junk that was in the temple so that they could finally get to the altar to begin worshipping. It took 16 days to clear out the junk! It took some work! They had to humble themselves.
This is something we have to do, too. There is junk that needs to be cleared out. We need to bow our own hearts. to humble ourselves.
The temptation is to ignore the junk that stands between us and God. Israel allowed the alter to become a junk room. And we can allow junk from our past, disappointments, fears, resentments to stand between God’s gracious presence. All that junk can rob us from experiencing God’s presence, his encouragment, his peace. We can keep storing junk, or we can begin to take the time to clear it all out.
We can come humbly to God each day, even as we come to the word in this podcast, let this time we share be a time to humble ourselves before God. He will remove the barriers you’ve put in place. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. (Heb 4:16 NLT)
