You may have been totally wrong and you may have been doing the wrong thing for a really long time, but God can turn that all around now. He can pull you out of the mess you created and save you from this. There’s only one thing you have to do. You must sincerely humble yourself and seek God. Lay it all down – the excuses, the guilt, the shame, the lies, the coverup – and look for God’s hand here.
2 Chronicles 33 tells of a King of Judah named Manasseh. Manasseh took the throne when he was only 12 years old and he was the ruler for 55 years. He did wrong, really wrong. His acts were evil in the sight of the Lord and absolutely detestable. Within the Lord’s temple, he built altars to other gods and worshiped them in the one true God’s place. Verse 6 says, “Manasseh also sacrificed his own sons in the fire in the valley of Bin-Hinnom. He practiced sorcery, divination, and witchcraft, and he consulted with mediums and psychics. He did much that was evil in the Lord’s sight, arousing his anger.”
God is not pleased when we seek guidance and direction from any other source, real or unreal, other than Him. Plain and simple, don’t do that. If God is not revealing something to you, don’t go out seeking that knowledge in other ways. If God wanted you to know the future, he would tell you, not some woman in a sitting in a dark room of a little shack along the highway. God’s words are already in your Bible, you don’t need to flip a card or perform a ritual to discover them.
What happens when we are living the wrong way? Well, we face consequences. We create messes, we live in messes. We seek things other than God, we find things other than God, and if it’s not God then it’s not good.
Life becomes really hard when we do the wrong things. I’m not saying life is miraculously easy when we live right, but it becomes unnecessarily hard when we’re doing it wrong. There’s absolutely no peace when we’re constantly trying to cover things up. There’s no joy when we’re secretly dabbling in things we know we shouldn’t dabble in. But dang if the devil doesn’t trick us into it anyway, huh?
Verse 10-11, “The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they ignored all his warnings. So the Lord sent the commanders of the Asyrian armies, and they took Manasseh prisoner. They put a ring through his nose, bound him in bronze chains, and led him away to Babylon.”
God sends us warnings. Warnings to turn from our wrong and seek him. Warnings to change what we’re doing on our own before he has to get involved and change things for us. You see my friend, if you’re not willing to change what God is prompting you to change, God may just step in and change things for you. Forced change is always harder than self-realized change.
Manasseh’s life is now miserable because he refused to partner with God in changing the things he was doing wrong. He has a ring in his nose and he’s bound in chains by the enemy. And whew, if that isn’t exactly what happens to us. The enemy binds us and claims us as his captive when we continue to do the things God has warned us are wrong. Our families fall apart. Everyone is suffering. Chaos surrounds us.
But there’s good news coming. Grace and mercy is waiting to meet you right here! You’re one choice away from those chains being broken and this mess being redeemed.
Verse 12-13, “But while in deep distress, Manasseh sought the Lord his God and sincerely humbled himself before the God of his ancestors. And when he prayed, the Lord listened to him and was moved by his request. So the Lord brought Manasseh back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom Then Manasseh finally realized that the Lord alone is God!”
Manasseh wasn’t required to fix a single thing first.