- And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. 2 Chronicles 33:12-13 – As you read the first section of this chapter it’s hard to imagine this would be a part of King Manasseh’s story. It said he hardcore turned from following after God like his father did. He rebuilt the altars to false gods, even building them in God’s temple. He sacrificed his own sons as offerings and is said to have done more evil than even the nations who possessed the land before Israel took it over. Yet, in his distress, when this evil-doing king reached out to God, God heard and was moved to compassion. Take examples like this from scripture to help you remember you nor anyone else is too far gone. I highly doubt any of us know people who are currently sacrificing their children to false gods and building idols in churches, yet God forgave even someone like that. He can forgive you, He can forgive that person in your life, and He wants us to share this message with the world. Praise God we serve a God who doesn’t have a limit to who He shows His compassion to! I love you, but Jesus loves you more – Mac- Daily DEVO 1547
- Nevertheless, the people still sacrificed at the high places, but only to the Lord their God. 2 Chronicles 33:17 -We read in this chapter how Manasseh deeply went after evil things during his reign as king. He rebuilt all the altars for idol worship, he created idols and put them in the temple of God, and even sacrificed his own sons to these false gods. As a result, the whole kingdom too went after these idols and these evils ways. God though got the attention of Manasseh, and Manasseh repented of his evil ways and began to seek out the Lord. As we read from our verse above though, the people of the kingdom didn’t completely turn from evil, but they continued to sacrifice on the altars on these high places. While yes, these sacrifices were to the Lord, it still was them choosing to worship how they wanted, not how God called them to in His word. This is something that far too often still happens in the church of today. We choose how we want to worship God rather than following how He says to worship Him. Rather than gathering with other believers, we do “church” on our own. Rather than giving our talents to His ministry work, we use it for our gain. Rather than a life of meditating on the words of scripture, Sunday suffices for our weekly amount of scripture intake. Like the people in our passage, worship can happen how we want it to happen, or we can follow God’s outline for it. Let’s seek to discard our ways and take on God’s ways for worship. For worship, not how God designed and called us to worship, is no worship at all. I love you, but Jesus loves you more – Mac – Daily DEVO 2622
Daily DEVO 