Katie Chitwood

SeedPod Kids

SeedPod Kids August 2023

Starting with Jesus

Jesus Cleans the Temple Part 1

SeedPod Kids July 2023

The Boy Jesus Part 6

The Boy Jesus Part 5

The Boy Jesus Part 4

The Boy Jesus Part 3

Reflect and Renew April 2023

Heather Bennett

Joash, the Boy King

Airborne troopers liberated the residents of the camp.

I noticed the form of my Aunt Emma talking to her best friend Jesus.

Kneeling next to her bed made an indelible impression upon my mind.

I'm so glad that you'll be joining me today.

We will be learning and growing together in our walk with Jesus.

You will surely be encouraged and challenged as we study week by week and hear from the experiences of others.

This week we're looking at the story of Joash.

If you've read the book My Bible Friends by Edith B.

Degreen, you know that there's a story in there called Joash the Boy King.

It's quite a remarkable story because you have this baby who is or could be the crowned king but he's rescued by his aunt because he is to be killed by his grandmother.

He's raised in secret until he's 7 years old and then placed on the throne by his uncle Jehoiada who just happens to be the high priest.

As a young man he desires to repair the temple, the place where he had been hidden for so many years.

At first he doesn't succeed but then he comes up with a plan.

He places a box by the entrance to the temple so that people can come and drop their money into that box and the money will be used for all the repairs needed.

The temple is finally repaired and the worship services are reinstated.

You know time goes by and the Bible tells us that his uncle Jehoiada died.

And you would think that with all those years of faithful, godly leadership that Joash would be okay.

He would continue to walk in the training of his youth.

The leaders of Judah come to him, the Bible says, and they bow to him.

The Bible doesn't say exactly, but it does tell us what the actions were that followed.

2 Chronicles 24 18 says, Therefore they left the house of the Lord God of their fathers, and served wooden images and idols, and wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem because of their trespasses.

Even with all this wrath, even though they turned away from God, God still has mercy.

So he sends them the prophets to help them see the error of their ways so that they can turn back to God.

Zechariah came to the king and he asked him questions that were designed to help Joash think about what he was doing to remember the God that his uncle Jehoiada had taught him about.

Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord so that you cannot prosper.

Why?" This made Joash angry and in fact rather than turning back to God, he turned against Zechariah, his cousin, and he even had him stoned to death.

Within a few months, Joash himself was wounded in battle and then his own servants plotted together and they killed the king.

What can we learn from this story about Joash?

Well, in our devotional that each week, Merle Poirier writes for Starting With Jesus, she brings out in this lesson the topic of influence.

And so if you want to read that devotional for yourself, you can go to our website, startingwithjesus.com slash renew.

Startingwithjesus.com forward slash renew, and you can read through it on your own but I want to talk about today influence what is influence well of course if you want to know the definition, where do you go now?

So I looked it up and the Oxford Dictionary says that influence is the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something.

In really simple terms or everyday English, it means that our actions will affect those around us.

Not only do we impact people around us, but we are impacted by others.

It can be emotionally, it can be physically, and it can be spiritually.

So let's think about people who have impacted our spiritual journey.

Maybe it's a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, a pastor, or a youth leader.

It's easy to be influenced by people and follow them or even their example rather than following the God who they serve.

The problem is that when we do this, when we follow the people rather than God, that person, when they're gone from our lives, We have nothing to stand on.

Just like Joash did in our story this week.

Yet, when we're influenced by those spiritual leaders in our lives, when we're pointed to Jesus, when He becomes our foundation, then you know what?

We have no need to fear for the future because our feet are firmly planted on Him.

Not a person, but the rock who will not suffer us to be moved.

This week we hear from Kevin Longo, who will share with us about a special woman in his life and how her walk with God, her devotion to God, made a profound impact in his own spiritual life at a young age.

In the summer of 1972, my mother and father bought a fixer-up our house in the Bay Area.

And my mom's aunt, Aunt Emma, came down to spend a week with us helping to clean up the kitchen and the rooms and making the house livable.

I had moved out of my bedroom to a back bedroom so that my aunt could have my room.

It was there that my aunt made a deep impression upon me.

Aunt Emma graduated from nursing school in the late 1930s.

She took a call as a missionary nurse to a hospital, an Adventist hospital, in Shanghai, China.

6 months after she arrived, the Japanese bombed and invaded China.

She and the others were captured and taken to prisoner of war camps.

She was in a number of camps, but finally ended up as Los Baños in the Philippines, south of Manila.

The commandant of her particular camp slowly starved them to death.

But a couple of days before the prisoners were scheduled to be executed, U.S.

Airborne Troopers Special Forces parachuted into the camp at 7 o'clock in the morning, eliminated the guards, and liberated the residents of the camp.

There were over 2, 000 missionary families there in the camp.

Emma returned to the United States where she recovered from malnutrition and the abuse and treatment that she had experienced.

And she continued her career as a nurse, serving and caring for patients in the Napa Valley.

And it was then, that time, that she came down and spent a week with us.

Now, I hadn't met Aunt Emma very many times before she came to our home.

In fact, I don't really remember meeting her more than maybe once or twice, But it was there in our home that week that I got to get personally acquainted with her and find out what kind of a person she really was.

She was the most loving Christian and the most happy Christian that I had ever met in my entire life.

She always had a smile, and she was so tender and compassionate.

I had never met anybody like that in my life.

1 morning, while I was walking down the hallway, I noticed her door was just slightly ajar.

I stopped and I peeked in and noticed that she was kneeling next to her bed with her Bible open, talking to her best friend Jesus.

That made a very deep impression upon me.

I had never seen anything like that before.

While my mother was a Christian and was committed to raise my sister and I to know Jesus, I had never seen somebody kneeling next to their bed in prayer.

Back to Menu

Presenter

Katie Chitwood

All Recordings

Jesus Cleans the Temple Part 1

10m

The Boy Jesus Part 6

12m

The Boy Jesus Part 5

11m

The Boy Jesus Part 4

11m

The Boy Jesus Part 3

12m

Joash, the Boy King

16m

Led By a Star Part 2

10m

The Boy Jesus Part 2

9m

The Boy Jesus Part 1

14m

Led By a Star Part 6

12m

Led By a Star Part 5

9m

Led By a Star Part 4

9m

Sound Doctrine