Money is hard to come by in the natural. No one likes to spend money on something only to find out in the end that it was a waste of resources.
2 Chronicles 25: 5-10 (MSG)
5-6 Amaziah organized Judah and sorted out Judah and Benjamin by families and by military units. Men twenty years and older had to register—they ended up with 300,000 judged capable of military service. In addition he hired 100,000 soldiers from Israel in the north at a cost of about four and a half tons of silver.
7-8 A holy man showed up and said, “No, O King—don’t let those northern Israelite soldiers into your army; God is not on their side, nor with any of the Ephraimites. Instead, you go by yourself and be strong. God and God only has the power to help or hurt your cause.”
9 But Amaziah said to the holy man, “But what about all this money—these tons of silver I have already paid out to hire these men?”
“God’s help is worth far more to you than that,” said the holy man.
10 So Amaziah fired the soldiers he had hired from the north and sent them home. They were very angry at losing their jobs and went home seething.
King Amaziah of Judea was getting ready for a battle and after counting his soldiers he decided to hire some more from the King of Israel. He spent four and a half tons of silver to hire 100,000 additional soldiers. A Holy man came and told him to send the Israelite’s home because God would not bless him with them as part of his army. The King said that he had already spent the money but the holy man replied that God’s help was worth more than money.
We read that the King followed the instructions, sent the hired soldiers home and had a great victory. There is an old saying “Throwing good money after bad”. That is what the King would have been doing if he had not listened to God. However it would not have been just money he would have been throwing away, he would have lost the battle and lives. Even with a larger army and greater resources, he would have lost.
In the natural we can see it would only make logical sense to do what this King had done by hiring the additional soldiers. However, we serve a supernatural God who sees things differently than we do. There will be times in our lives that we will have God place something in our spirit, a particular instruction that may not make sense to the natural mind.
Think about forgiveness, does that make sense in the natural? Maybe not in the natural but totally necessary in order to find our forgiveness and healing. Jesus instructed us that if we want forgiveness, we must first forgive those who have wronged us. We must be obedient to God’s leading through The Holy Spirit. Those instructions will always be in line with His Word. We must follow God’s Word and instructions in order to see God’ s will for our life unfold.
This King saw a great victory with fewer in number. Although he was upset about the wasted money he did not let that stop him from following God’s commandment to send the hired troops home. He believed God, step forward in faith and was rewarded.
God has great plans for us and we need to trust that He is more than able to deliver us. God’s help is worth more to us than any amount of money because no amount of money will ever be able to deliver us or set us free! Only through a personal relationship with Jesus will we find freedom and peace with God.