Who do you listen to?

Are you only good when the right person is giving you advice? Do you change when the people around you change? Are you careful about the group of folks that you run with?

Today's reading really spoke to my heart about the people that influence our journey. These people don't walk our journey for us, but they do help us make good choices. In the end, we will still answer for ourselves nobody else.

It does help if we seek the right advice along the way, don't you think? Today's reading from 2 Kings 12: 1-16 spoke along this line. Joash is a good king as long as his trusted high priest was alive. He loved this older man and respected him. Without his chief advisor, he wandered off of God's mission - way off!

Joash, was 7 years old when he assumed the throne of Judah for 40 years. This is the little boy that escaped death from the evil Queen Athaliah. This queen thought she killed all the legal heirs to the throne, but she missed one. Look at verse 2 ~ Joash did what was pleasing in the Lord's sight because the priest instructed him. Even though he did not destroy the pagan shrines.

Joash wanted to repair the temple and he set up the way the money would be taken to do this: 1) each male 20 years old would a half-shekel per head 2) money received from payments on personal vows which varied from 3 to 50 shekels 3) voluntary..23 years later the temple was still not repaired..No more money for the priests and Joash took things in his own hands. He made a chest with a hole to place your money and set it at the gate. Money just flowed in at this point. Joash and Jehoiada personally handled the temple work from this point on.

Isn't it sad, that during the restructuring or rebuilding that they still didn't remove the pagan altars? What about us? Do we remove the things we place before God when we are working on our temples? Focus is so important in our journeys.

Today, what will you focus on? What will you make the center of your journey? I know that my life processes much easier as long as I keep God where He should be at number 1. Life flows along rather well, the moment that I let my relationship with Him slide my life slides as well. Look at your own, wouldn't this be true of you as well? Or am I alone in sliding and the results of the sliding?

The people around us help us to focus on what is right. You are who you run with...I remember my parents teaching this and turns out that once again they are right

Many blessings,