July 7

Today's reading: 1 Kings 22:1-53

Here we see that Ahab, king of Israel (the northern 10 tribes) and Jehoshaphat, king of Judah (the southern 2 tribes) agree to join together to fight the Syrians. But Jehoshaphat first wants to hear from a prophet of the Lord. Ahab is only willing to listen to the four hundred "prophets" who always told him what he wanted to hear. But Jehoshaphat insisted that they hear from Micaiah. But Ahab doesn't want to listen to him because he always prophesied against him - which is exactly what we would expect because of Ahab's wickedness.

Sure enough the 400 tell Ahab to go to battle and that he will be victorious. But Micaiah tells Ahab the Lord has declared disaster on him. Not surprisingly, Ahab listens to those who tell him what he wants to hear and he ends up being killed in battle.

Before we're too quick to judge Ahab, however, we need to consider how prone we are to do exactly the same thing in our life - listen to what we want to hear and ignore what offends us. We can even do that with the Bible. Ask God to reveal to you today any part of HIs Word that you have refused to listen to because you don't like what it says.