Monday, December 29, 2008

Mon., 12/29/08 Devotion (2 Chron. 34:3)

Today's encouragement comes from 2 Chronicles 34:3, which says this:

"For in the eighth year of [Josiah's] reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the wooden images, the carved images, and the molded images."

Josiah, one of the all-time greatest kings of Judah, was only 16 years-old when he began doing great things for the church of God. His grandfather Manasseh had wasted most of his life, and all of his youth, in idolatrous blasphemy. Josiah's father Amon had not been promising at all. Humanly-speaking, it is astounding that Josiah, from such an early age, would be so very great.

Josiah reminds us that the church's children and youth need not wait to grow old, in order to be effective in the kingdom of God. May they be zealous for the Lord, and his house, from their earliest days.

[Puritan quote of the day: "The Word written is a repository in which God has laid up sovereign oils and balsams to recover sick souls; and the word preached is the pouring out of these oils, and applying them to the sick patient." --Thomas Watson, in his sermon entitled, "The Soul's Malady and Cure"]