The High Places

I continue to read in 2 Kings and phew!! You really need to be awake to keep track of all of those people whose names begin with Jeho_____. Some are men and some are women, some are from Judah and some are from Israel. It can get a bit confusing keeping families and kingdoms straight. Well I digress.

In reading these kingdom accounts, I keep thinking about the high places. Many times in these descriptions it is said, “…and he did evil in the sight of the Lord.” But every now again you come across a king who “did right in the eyes of the Lord, but…he did not remove the high places.”

The high places…what are they? Well in going through the Bible with National Community Church blog site, I learned that not only are the high places used for the idol worshippers to sacrifice and worship their gods but they also were used by the early kings and prophets of God (Samuel) to sacrifice to the Lord before the temple was built. God commanded that the high places of the idols be destroyed and no sacrifices to or worship of Him be done where idols had been worshipped. Apparently there is still debate as to whether worshipping and sacrificing to God on the high places was “ok” prior to the completion of the Temple, since there was no central location to do this in. Needless to say, they existed for various reasons and became a means to cause the people of God to stumble and fall into idol worship. (Commentary from The NIV Study Bible, Zondervan Publishing House: 1995.)

So how do the high places fit into my life…your life? Obviously we are not having idol worship and sacrifices occurring in our cities and towns. However, are we keeping little stashes of things that get in the way of our time with God and maybe keep us from hearing Him or doing things for Him and His people in the best way we can?

High places give you the impression that they’re not that close, they don’t get visited very often, they’re so far away many people don’t see them or even know about them but they are always there and I know about them, you know about them. The knowledge of them and the frequent or infrequent visits to those high places still affect our relationship with Christ. “How?” you might ask, by keeping us from giving God our whole heart. Several passages in the Old and New Testament say we are to love God with all of our heart, all of our mind, all of our soul and with all our strength.

Are there things in your life that keep you from giving all of yourself and all of your efforts to God? Do you want the commentary on your life to read, “Joe/Joelle did what was right in the eyes of the Lord but did not remove the high places”?