2 Chronicles 29:1 KJV
Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and twenty years old, and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah.
Hezekiah would have been about nine years old when his father took the reign of Judah. That is old enough that he could have remembered his grandfather Jotham's heart for God. But for the sixteen years that his father, Ahaz ruled he would neither have seen the worship of God practiced or heard the Word of God preached. His father closed the doors of the Temple and for all those years the priests had not served the Lord.
Yet in Hezekiah's first year of reign he instructed the priests to restore the Temple and reorder the worship fo God. One has to wonder what influenced him to do so. Perhaps that is where his mother comes into the picture. It is significant I think that, especially in the kings of Judah, God's Word gives us the name of each king's mother. These kings of course had more than one wife so that record would be important for genealogical information, but it may be here more because of the mother's influence on their sons either for or against God.
I can remember to this day a conversation I had with my mother when I was probably in fourth or fifth grade. I asked Mom about Jesus. She told me that He was real and He was God. That conversation gave me "permission" to listen to the voice of God that had already been drawing me toward Him. I will be forever thankful for my mom and her part in my faith in Jesus Christ.
Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and twenty years old, and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah.
Hezekiah would have been about nine years old when his father took the reign of Judah. That is old enough that he could have remembered his grandfather Jotham's heart for God. But for the sixteen years that his father, Ahaz ruled he would neither have seen the worship of God practiced or heard the Word of God preached. His father closed the doors of the Temple and for all those years the priests had not served the Lord.
Yet in Hezekiah's first year of reign he instructed the priests to restore the Temple and reorder the worship fo God. One has to wonder what influenced him to do so. Perhaps that is where his mother comes into the picture. It is significant I think that, especially in the kings of Judah, God's Word gives us the name of each king's mother. These kings of course had more than one wife so that record would be important for genealogical information, but it may be here more because of the mother's influence on their sons either for or against God.
I can remember to this day a conversation I had with my mother when I was probably in fourth or fifth grade. I asked Mom about Jesus. She told me that He was real and He was God. That conversation gave me "permission" to listen to the voice of God that had already been drawing me toward Him. I will be forever thankful for my mom and her part in my faith in Jesus Christ.
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