God Has Something Better In Store

"But a man of God came to him and said, 'O king, these troops from Israel must not march with you, for the LORD is not with Israel—not with any of the people of Ephraim. Even if you go and fight courageously in battle, God will overthrow you before the enemy, for God has the power to help or to overthrow.'

Amaziah asked the man of God, 'But what about the hundred talents I paid for these Israelite troops?'

The man of God replied, 'The LORD can give you much more than that.'

So Amaziah dismissed the troops who had come to him from Ephraim and sent them home. They were furious with Judah and left for home in a great rage."

The LORD can give you much more than that.

Struggling with believing that promise—and seeing God carry it through, nonetheless—sums up the past year of my life. God worked to change me primarily through my first steps into the work world. Several distinct points come out in the passage that sum up the lessons God continues to teach me about trusting Him.

Even if you go and fight courageously in battle, God will overthrow you before the enemy, for God has the power to help or to overthrow.

Now that's a scary thought. Even my best, most valiant efforts will come to nothing if they're contrary to God's will in my life. God showed me this by putting me in situations where I was powerless to control the circumstances—I could do nothing but trust Him and believe that He will carry out his promises. He promises to provide for His people, but here I was not getting any job offers or interviews. It was a frustrating place to be in, but God used it to teach me prayerful patience. I'm still learning to grow in that area of my life.

Amaziah asked the man of God, "But what about the hundred talents I paid for these Israelite troops?"

Amaziah had just spent a hundred talents of silver to hire Israelite troops to support him in a war, and now God was asking him to disband the soldiers and take the loss. Out of curiosity, I tried to figure out how much a hundred talents of silver is worth. My study notes said it was about 3.75 tons, which at current silver prices comes out to just under $1 million. God was asking Amaziah not only to part with all that treasure, but also with all the soldiers he could hire with it. Wow.

Sometimes doing God's will means giving up on what seems like a sure thing—and at times, with great cost. As I was considering my first job offer—which seemed pretty good to me—it became abundantly clear that God wanted me to turn it down. That wasn't an easy thing to do; I had no other prospects on the table—no offers, not even email responses. I can still list a couple reasons why it seemed clear that taking the job was what I thought God would want—could turning it down really be His will for me?

The man of God replied, "The LORD can give you much more than that."

This is where faith needs to step in. I needed to learn that God has something better in store for me, even better than the best thing I can see right now—maybe even better than the best thing I can imagine right now. It's promised throughout the Bible, but it takes faith not only that God can, but that He will. He's continuing to teach me this lesson in other aspects of my life, and I'm slowly learning not to trust my "better" judgement.

So Amaziah dismissed the troops who had come to him from Ephraim and sent them home. They were furious with Judah and left for home in a great rage.

Sometimes you do the right thing and expect everything to immediately be great—all rainbows and sunshine. Instead, for Amaziah, he saw a bunch of very angry Israelites storm away, and as we learn later, they plundered Judean towns in retaliation. Even after you choose to trust God's will over your own, your circumstances may not immediately get better. They may never get better. This truth is a hard one to swallow. Why would God lead us down a path that doesn't feel great? So that we would learn to rely on Him, and not ourselves, our circumstances, or our feelings. In my case, I didn't have a single interview for a good month and a half after turning down the offer. And I watched as one of my classmates went ahead and gladly accepted the position I turned down. I started to wonder if I'd been too picky.

In all of this, though, what I needed to do, and now understand in retrospect, was to remember God's promise: "The LORD can give you much more than that." And He did. Amaziah won the war. I got a great job, far better than I ever expected. More importantly, I tasted the peace that comes from knowing you're doing God's will. Right after I turned down my first offer, I had no real regrets worth mentioning, and I was a little surprised at how confident I was about my future in God's hands. I was actually a little giddy with excitement to see what God had in store!

He continues to give more every day of my life. Now I need to learn to trust in that promise in all aspects of my life, especially the ones where the cost seems great and I want to do what seems best to me.

Appropriately, I can see in many, many ways how I can take absolutely no credit for all the good things that have happened to me, so only God gets the glory and the thanksgiving. Alleluia!