2 Chronicles 25:8, “The Lord has the power to help you or trip you up.” Do you want God to help you? Well, we must ask, what warrants God’s help? If you feel God has been tripping you up instead, we must also ask, what warrants God’s resistance?

It’s actually quite simple and there’s no need to make it mysterious or complicated. Your obedience to God warrants his help. Your disobedience to God warrants God’s resistance. When you’re obedient, he will help you in divine and marvelous ways. When you are disobedient, he will trip you up at every corner and absolutely nothing will seem to work.

There are extreme perks to obedience. When you seek to follow and obey God, you are NOT suddenly more loved or more righteous. You are not earning salvation. Ephesians 2:9, “Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.” This is all a gift from God which not a single one of us could ever be good enough to earn. However, there is something undeniable that happens when you seek to follow and obey God, and here it is: You’re on a path God can bless.

Obedience aligns your steps going in the direction of God’s blessings. Obedience puts you on the path of unspeakable goodness. God WANTS to bless you. God wants to help you. Obedience aligns you with the outpouring of his desired blessings and divine help.

Disobedience quite simply gets you off track. And when you’re off track, you miss what God has for you. Blessings never jump off track and go chasing you down dark alleys. God’s blessings are on the path of his intended will, and if you’re straying off the path, those blessings simply never collide with you.

In your disobedience and pursuit of your own way, God absolutely WILL trip you up. Why? Because he loves you too much to sit back and watch you continue down a path without his blessings. Here’s what we miss: God trips us because he loves us. He sees where we’re heading and he knows the blessings we are forfeiting, so he sticks his holy foot out and trips us up.

THANK YOU, LORD!

Right now, think of the times when you’ve been heading in the wrong direction, making the wrong plans with the wrong people, and suddenly absolutely nothing would work for you. You fell on your face. Faceplants are a sweet, sweet gift of God. That’s our moment of forced pause. That’s our opportunity for redirection. If God didn’t love you, he would have let you keep running right into that, but instead his holy foot tripped you.

Looking back we see it. How many times in our moments of failure did we say, “God, why me?” but we failed to hear his answer of, “Because, my girl, I love you too much to let you continue on this path. I have so much better for you.”

Isn’t God sweet? It’s awesome when God blesses us, but it’s life changing when God stops us.

If you have a loved one running full steam ahead on the wrong path, maybe a good prayer would be, “Father, in your loving grace and mercy, would you place your holy foot on their path and allow them to trip? And when they trip, would you catch them and lovingly redirect them?”

That’s what he’s done for you, my sister. He’s tripped you, he’s caught you and he’s redirected you. Now, as you walk the path of his will, he can help you in supernatural ways because his blessings are per-aligned all along the way for you!

Now, let’s dig deeper into this scripture. 2 Chronicles 25:8 says, “God has the power to help you or trip you up”, but what is the context? Who is receiving this warning and what can we learn from it?

King Amaziah was the ruler of Judah. Judah is the land of south Jerusalem. There have been a series of good kings and bad kings. One who does good in the sight of God, then one who does bad. Amaziah sought and followed the Lord, and his obedience was met with God’s help. Now, King Amaziah is facing a battle, and upon a census he found he had an army of 300,000 soldiers. He feared what God had given him wasn’t enough for the next battle, so verse 6 says, “He paid about 7,500 pounds of silver to hire 100,000 experienced fighting men from Israel.” That was a huge financial investment. It was also a guaranteed fighting advantage against his enemies.

Now verse 7 & 8, “But a man of God came to him and said, ‘Your Majesty, do not hire troops from Israel, for the Lord is not with Israel. He will not help those people of Ephraim! If you let them go with your troops into battle, you will be defeated by the enemy no matter how well you fight. God will overthrow you, for he has the power to help you or trip you up.'”

Ahhhh, there it is! Now the king has a choice to make. He’s already invested all of this money and brought all of these troops in from Israel, but he’s being warned by God that is not the right thing to do. But there’s two problems here:

1. Canceling the hired troops doesn’t make military sense. The extra help is needed to win the battle.

2. Canceling the hired troops means all his financial investment is a waste.

I’ve discovered sometimes the promptings of God really do not make human sense. But God is asking, “Will you trust yourself and your own wisdom, or will you trust me, the one who sees it all and has the ultimate power to help you or trip you up?”

That’s what he is asking you right now. Who are you trusting here? Does this always have to make sense to you, or will your next step be guided in faith?

But also, what if being obedient to God costs you? What if you’ve already invested in going one direction and then you realize God is telling you to go the other direction? But God, would you really want me to lose all this money? Would you really want all my work to be wasted here? Let’s be clear – YES. Yes he would. He absolutely WOULD want you to waste money in your obedience and walk away from invested time and energy and resources to follow his will. I know that doesn’t make sense and your human reasoning can’t make that add up, but God holds the divine power to help you here or trip you up.

Obedience warrants God’s help. Disobedience warrants God’s resistance. God’s resistance in this will make absolutely everything fall apart and nothing will work. God’s help in this will open doors you could have never ever opened on your own.

God will not force your obedience. That’s yours to give or withhold. Absolutely no one else can be obedient for you. And no one else can force you to be disobedient. This is your choice to make.

So, what did King Amaziah do? Well, first he considered the cost of obedience. Verse 9, “Amaziah asked the man of God, ‘But what about all that silver I paid to hire the army of Israel?’ The man of God replied, ‘The Lord is able to give you much more than this!'”

Now that is a truth bomb right there. Anything you sacrifice in obedience can be repaid with so much more. God responds to your obedience with his supernatural help, and when you’re moving forward in obedience with the benefit of supernatural help, whew, the storehouses of heaven are opened!

Verse 10-11, “So Amaziah discharged the hired troops and sent them back. Then Amaziah summoned his courage and led his army to the Valley of Salt.” And there, even with a smaller army and less likely odds, they received their victory.

My sister, when you do the right thing in obedience to God, he is able to return much more to you. Walking in obedience leads to the promised victory.

You know what I’m learning? I’m learning disobedience is entirely too expensive.

Seeking and following God in obedience is not easy and it’s not cheap. It will cost you something.

How much will it cost you to be obedient to God here? It might cost you that comfortable lifestyle. It might cost you that guaranteed paycheck. It might cost you those familiar relationships. It might cost you your beloved plans. Whatever the cost of obedience, it will ultimately be cheaper than disobedience here.

God has victory for you, but your chosen next steps determine your path. Will it be the path God can help, or the path God must resist?

How do you know the difference? Oh honey, you simply ask him!

Lord, what do I do here? I genuinely want to follow your will over my own. I wholeheartedly desire your help and blessings. I’m seeking you. I want to be obedient, even when it costs me something.

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