After the fall of Jerusalem, a man named Gedaliah was named governor of the area by Nebuchadnezzar.
Gedaliah appears to be a good man, and he attempted to calm the fears of the remaining Jews and was successful. In fact, many of the Jews that had scattered among the nations, returned under Gedaliah.
But Gedaliah was naive. He was warned that a man named Ishmael, of the house of David, was plotting to kill him. Despite this, Gedaliah refused to believe ill of Ishamel, and did nothing to protect himself.
The result was that Gedaliah paid for it with his life. Not only that, the good he had done came apart as the people who had returned to Israel under him fled to Egypt.
What can we learn from this? We can have the best of intentions, and indeed do much good in our lives. But if we fail to heed the warning signs around us, all the good we do can come undone.
My pastor has in past Sunday messages shared about his own life and how his own family almost came undone at one point.
He was an assistant pastor at another church at the time, but he had spent so much time at the church doing ministry, it was causing harm to his family.
His wife had come down with ulcers because of the stress, his son had started to develop a nervous tic in his face as well. But all the while, he ignored all of this because he was doing “good” in his ministry.
Had he continued on that path, he could’ve lost both his family and his ministry.
Finally he realized he wasn’t living within God’s will. He took some time off to seek God, and during that time, he realized that he was out of God’s will and that he needed to change.
God has since blessed both his family and ministry in great ways and we are so blessed to have him as our pastor.
You may be doing good things, but are there warning signs in your life that you’re missing? With your personal life? With your family? With your finances? With your ministry? If you fail to heed the warning signs, you can lose everything.
Let us not be like Gedaliah, but rather heed the warning signs.
And by following God’s leading and direction, let us walk the path he has laid out for us.
Moment to Moment (Bible blog) 