How many times in your life have you made a rash decision just to wish you could take it back? It might have been after you experienced consequences for your choice or your conscience might have been tormenting you, but the results were the same. You acted hastily and paid or are still paying the price for your indiscretion.

Josiah provides a perfect example of a hasty decision that carried certain consequences. Throughout Josiah's life, he'd been blessed by God to the degree he couldn't imagine anyone else was as spiritual as him. That is, until Neco, the king of Egypt came along. Who would've anticipated that a heathen king would be on mission for God and the king of God's people not be informed? But that's exactly what happened.

Solomon noted a similar problem in the life of someone who finds fame and prosperity overnight. What they learn all too often is what comes easily too often goes away the same way. In other words, what comes without consideration usually goes without explanation.

Can you discern the problem that king Josiah exhibited? It's the problem of self-centricity. In other other words, the whole world revolves around you and everything must be evaluated and reconciled on the basis of how it affects you. You may be like that, but I hope not. Josiah couldn't imagine Neco heard from God and he hadn't. Instead of asking God for confirmation or believing the testimony of a credible witness, he lost his life in a battle that was not his to fight. I wonder how many we're fighting that are not ours to fight?

In Paul's letter to the Corinthians, he started by declaring that the Christians living in Corinth were part of a greater family of believers who shared the same inheritance - Jesus Christ.

I pray that today we'll be careful to consider what God is doing in the life of others is as important as what He is doing in our own. As part of a great family of Christians, we not only share a future but we work in the same present to accomplish the same goals: glorify Jesus and proclaim the Gospel wherever we live and go.

1 Developed from Read the Bible Thru ( 2 Cr. 35:1-36:23 1 Co. 1:1-17 Ps. 27:1-7 Pr. 20:20-21 )
2. Scripture comes from the Holy Bible, New International Version; (c)1978 by New York International Bible Society

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