Decisions about faithfulness might be the key moments of your life
When Barack Obama finished his two terms as US President, he wrote books recounting his version of what happened in those years. These are heavy tomes; apparently, a lot happens when you are the leader of a country! Yet King Jehoash of the kingdom of Israel in 2 Kings 13 had his sixteen years of rule summarised by four verses. Four verses! The writer of 2 Kings seems rather dismissive in 13:10-13. It is as if we are being told that nothing of significance happened in those sixteen years.
Think about that. Any king would actually make a lot of decisions and do a lot of things in sixteen years, even an evil or incompetent one. They would make foreign policy decisions, work on building projects, set taxation, and deal with internal issues. Yet, according to God, none of these things mattered very much. Jehoash did not do anything to move the kingdom towards faithfulness during his reign, so the details of what else he did are lost to history.
We are told, however, of one conversation King Jehoash had during his lifetime. The writer of Kings records an interaction Jehoash had with the prophet Elisha before he died. During that conversation, while he was sad that Elisha was about to die, he showed only limited faith in what God could do. This conversation was the way that we got to the heart of what King Jehoash was like. This important conversation led to his life, and the kingdom, heading in a certain direction.
Our lives can be like that too. Much of our lives might be a little mundane. We work, we spend time with family, and we get involved with many things. Yet there will be certain times, certain decisions, that change the direction of our lives and matter more. Perhaps it is the decision to marry someone (or not to marry someone!). Perhaps it will be the decision to listen to a friend explain the gospel to us, or the practical action we took when confronted with our sin. We never know when a particular episode in our life might be the one that really matters.
Strive for godliness; serving King Jesus matters more than all of the other things that fill our lives. The way we respond to God’s word and trust God through the hard times will make more difference in the end than the money in our bank accounts or the achievements on our CV.