This summer during my quiet time I’ve been reading through 1 & 2 Kings. Every time that I read through the different stories of the kings of Israel and Judah, the Holy Spirit reveals to me characteristics of God that I very much need to be reminded of. One of these lessons came while I was reading through 1 Kings chapter 20. In this chapter, the king of Israel at the time was Ahab, is at war against Syria and its king, Ben-hadad. During one of the battles in the mountains near Samaria, God gives Ahab and the Israelites victory over the Syrians. As Ben-hadad and his leaders are discussing what went wrong with the battle, and strategizing for revenge, they make the assumption that the reason for their loss was because they fought in the mountains and the God of Israel must be God of the mountains. Their solution is to fight the next battle in a valley at Aphek, a location farther north from Samaria and closer to Syria. Ben-hadad and his leaders are certain that this place much further away, and in a valley, is too far away for the God of Israel, and will be out of His area of influence. God sends word of Ben-hadad’s plans to Ahab through a prophet, and in 1 Kings 20:28 the prophet says this to Ahab: “Thus says the LORD, ‘Because the Syrians have said, “The LORD is a god of the hills but he is not a god of the valleys,” therefore I will give all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the LORD.’” I never doubt that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever-present in His creation, but I do need to be reminded of these truths by the Holy Spirit. This simple response that God provides to the assumption that there are places where His people are more vulnerable and easier to conquer has been that reminder for me lately. Even though we are weak, and we certainly have plenty of low places in our lives where the enemy can drag us down and hope to defeat us, God calls out to us and tells us that there isn’t a place that exists that is outside of His power and influence. He is at work just as much in the valleys of our lives as He is in the peaks, constantly working to make His name known among the nations.