Manasseh

2 Chronicles 33 talks about Manasseh, the most wicked king of Judah, the king whose wickedness was the reason for the captivity.

I want us to examine that wickedness by looking at his father, Hezekiah.

Incidentally, Hezekiah is widely known as a godly king with a stellar history of faith.

After he had prayed against his death and was added fifteen years, he became proud. And it is from that that we get these verses.

And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. Then said Hezekiah unto Isaiah, Good is the word of the LORD which thou hast spoken. And he said, Is it not good, if peace and truth be in my days? (2Kings 20: 18, 19)

It was therefore in that backslidden state that he raised young Manasseh.

But his backslidden state did not go as far as Solomon’s since only his heart had shifted. It was only in his heart that fire for God had become all but extinguished.

Outwardly, he was the same Hezekiah

This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. (Matthew 15:8)

No wonder he had no issues with his sons being castrated to serve other kings.

You see, with pride, self becomes the predominantly guiding light.

In fact, even his prayer against death went along those lines.

How can you be so unfair, appears the pitch of that prayer.

You do not weep bitterly unless you feel unfairly treated.

And to imagine it was God it was directed at!

That is the kind of heart that raised young Manasseh.

Sadly, the mouth continued speaking the right things.

But we know that children do not listen to words.

They normally glean from the heart and spirit.

An example is this parent who sends his children to buy him a smoke yet never forgets to remind them that smoking is dangerous. Or the one railing against drunkenness when they know that he becomes more talkative after a pint.

All his children will become smokers despite all those warnings.

And that is what happened to Hezekiah’s powerful testimonies of his earlier spiritual exploits.

The only thing that young child was able to pick was that godless and rebellious spirit.

Another thing that made it so tragic was that he had not grown enough to examine the evidence to establish whether his father was lying or even what had happened for his life to be that shallow.

He respected his father and picked that rebellious spirit from him.

No wonder he hated God with so much passion!

He couldn’t distinguish between the God his father spoke so passionately and convincingly about and the rebellious spirit he lived by.

This means that when push came to shove, he would choose the spirit and trash the testimony.

Your actions are speaking so loudly that I can’t hear what you are saying, is the outcome of a life lived at cross purposes when picked by a child like Manasseh.

Your life is being lived in full colour that there is absolutely no attraction at all from the fuzzy, hazy and undistinguishable monochrome images your narratives are trying to point me to.

I am still speaking about spiritual leadership and parenting.

And we are doing this all the time, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we believe it or not.

I know someone is shouting to me to prove one or the other thing.

Manasseh is the sum total of Hezekiah’s backslidden state.

And I will take us to the answer people are asking for.

And when he was in affliction, he besought the LORD his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, And prayed unto him: and he was intreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD he was God. And he took away the strange gods, and the idol out of the house of the LORD, and all the altars that he had built in the mount of the house of the LORD, and in Jerusalem, and cast them out of the city. And he repaired the altar of the LORD, and sacrificed thereon peace offerings and thank offerings, and commanded Judah to serve the LORD God of Israel. (2Chronicles 33: 12, 13, 15, 16)

He required his own encounter with God to know that the God his father had been speaking about was actually God and acted accordingly.

That realisation could have led to a huge revival.

The only impediment was that his earlier state had been so bad that it became impossible for that revival to reverse the damage his spiritual heritage had planted.

This also proves something many always refuse to face; and it is that the earlier someone responds to and starts serving God, the better everything becomes.

Simply because there is very little baggage involved.

I do not know whether people say it nowadays, but when we were young, people would plead for time to ‘eat’ life first and get saved later.

I have ministered with that sample of believers and one very visible dynamic you will notice without looking is regret.

The wastefulness of a life lived outside God’s revelation cannot be hidden because the damages accrued therein are constant pricks on one’s whole existence.

A worse thing would be a backslidden life, especially Hezekiah’s kind of backsliding.

And that because it is like a cancer eating ever so slowly and unobtrusively, especially to the backslider. And some examples are in order.

Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. (Revelation 2: 4, 5)

The previous verses read like a huge commendation.

Nothing about the church was questionable.

But the fire in their heart had waned.

That is what they were being rebuked for.

Think about doing ministry on autopilot!

This means it is possible to do ministry for so long as to do it by instinct. To the point that I can backslide and nobody will be able to know the difference.

Please note that I am not talking about the outward backsliding as we see with Solomon, Uzziah and many others.

Reminds me of the ministers in Matthew 7

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matthew 7: 22, 23)

They were not able to know when their ministry was deleted from God’s records because they were not able to see the fire in their hearts cooling off ever so slowly.

That is the backsliding I want us to consider here.

And it is important to do it because for the most part none of us is able to see it in us or even in our circles.

And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. (Revelation 3:1)

As was the case with the church in Ephesus, the externals were glowing. But the internals were completely kaput.

And both required the eye of the Only One who could see the heart to diagnose their situation.

It means that, apart from God, only someone whose eyes God has opened can see that reality and accurately address it.

Sadly, many times, he is made the enemy by the systems and people in that state, something I have seen enough times in ministry.

It requires immense humility and faith from us to even imagine that we could be so backslidden when the reports of our exploits are glowing wherever we look.

Incidentally, that is why prophets are always endangered. They can see what God is seeing, an unpleasant reality that we are not willing or ready to face.

But if we released ourselves to God and allowed Him to shine His all-powerful flashlight on our spirits, we will see ourselves as He sees us.

However, I feel there are some guidelines to help us navigate this confusing maze where actions and words are removed from the state of the heart. And self is the clearest one.

By self, do not just think of ego.

Think of structures, histories, relationships, impacts,

What makes you bend the rules ever so slightly?

Who takes you from a ‘lesser’ ministry opportunities?

Why do you refuse to minister at particular places?

What makes your blood hot for no reason?

What makes you look the other way when a supporter or partner is in the wrong?

When our life’s direction shifts slightly off Christ and His agenda, Christ and His assignment, Christ and His passion, Christ and His victory, we have shifted from the straight and narrow.

We are slightly off the centre. But off the centre all the same.

Why is it that sycophants are the ones who get closest to the centre of ministries and churches even as people who are known for their spirituality are slowly but surely kicked away from those decision-making centres?

Why is it that the people who enjoy the best support are the cheer leaders for the leadership instead of the ones doing the actual ministry?

Why do senior ministers with means shun their filial responsibilities if their own families refuse to join their cheerleading choirs?

Why do senior ministers ringfence their offices to block serious believers (especially those they grew up with in ministry) from getting in?

Why is retirement anathema to senior ministers?

All these questions are meant to guide us to the state of our spirits.

But I believe it is more important for us to get positive glimpses of the right thing.

A fire in the spirit is indicated by an overflowing passion for God and His agenda, an agenda that is completely opposed to the pursuit of mine.

He must increase, but I must decrease. (John 3:30)

And we will start with Biblical examples.

Jacob is dying.

He calls his sons and reminds them of The Promise, reminding them to continue being faithful to it and even requiring to be buried there.

Joseph is also dying.

As a way of ensuring that the promise is never forgotten, he requires an intergenerational oath to ensure it is never forgotten by asking that his bones be buried in the promised land. And it was a promise that would take centuries to come to fruition.

Moses is told his time was up.

Deuteronomy is the product where he is passing his fire to the next generation. And he also prepared Joshua and anointed him to take over from him.

We see the same with Joshua. And David.

In the New Testament, we see the same with Paul.

In his earlier letters, he is pushing around as Paul.

In his later letters, we are seeing him again passing the fire by issuing instructions and guidelines to another generation of ministers, giving them status and authority to minister.

We see the same with Peter and John.

The fire of God in a heart grows outward to infect others.

But it does more than that.

It allows those others to thrive, even outshine the origin of that fire.

Remember Moses when some were reported to have prophesied outside the centre and someone wanted them stopped?

And Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the LORD'S people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them! (Number 11:29)

A heart on fire for God is not content blazing alone.

Fire always spreads.

This means that, if I am scared of seeing the spread of my fire; if I am scared of losing control of that spread; if I want to always want to be in charge of my fire, ...

It is probably the most glaring indication that I have lost my spiritual fire.

It is most probably true that the fire I have is self created and self sustained.

It is probable that I lost God’s fire loooong ago and am operating on counterfeit fire, a strange fire that is offensive to God.

God’s fire thinks about the next generation.

God’s fire prepares aggressively to ensure that the next generation has even better tools (greater fire) to blaze.

And God’s fire prepares to exit the stage and watches that next generation blaze even better than it did.

As I have written about elders, that is the reason priests and Levites retired at fifty as per God’s own commandment.

This is so that they can enjoy seeing the result of their passing on their fire.

What am I saying?

I am shouting from the rooftops that you are completely and probably hopelessly backslidden if you are unable think of ministry without you.

And the folly of it all is that you will eventually exit that stage.

You will either become too infirm to perform or even die.

Even the wife or child you are planning to hand over to for your security will also exit.

Worse still, they could become like little Manasseh who will put to shame everything you so painfully built.

All because you became too selfish to give God the space to run His enterprise.

Your fire is not God’s fire unless it is intergenerational.

It is not God’s fire unless it allows for your letting go of everything to allow it to spread as God chooses.

Why is it so difficult to let go of ministry you openly say is God’s when in your youth you left everything, from jobs to classes to businesses, to pursue it?

Why is it becoming painful to imagine that ministry thriving without you?

I know this is an extremely hard teaching.

But I am convinced it is a message for our generation.

Because we were such a radical generation and nothing could stand between us and God’s revelation.

We left families. We left churches. We left jobs. We left businesses. We left security. We left relationships.

It is hard to imagine that God’s ministry has now become a personal enterprise or a club for a select few.

Will we allow God to shine His powerful spotlight on our hearts?

Will we go to the closet to ensure He does it His way?

God bless you