Ladies Bible Study Saturday, May 28th

by | May 28, 2011

2 Chronicles 33:10-13

And the Lord spake to Manasseh and to his people:  but they would not hearken.  Wherefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters and carried him to Babylon.  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 entreated of him, and heard his supplication and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom.  Then Manasseh knew that the Lord He was God.

Manasseh didn’t just do a little wrong; he did everything you could think of wrong.  He was involved in witchcraft and sacrificing children to Satan and worshipping the gods of other people and put their idols in the House of the Lord and the list goes on and yet God in His mercy and grace tried to speak to Manasseh and the children of Israel to turn their hearts back to Him and they wouldn’t listen so He had to move on to discipline.

Here’s the crazy thing; how merciful are you?  How merciful is your church?  How do you respond when someone has walked away from God and they are ready to come back to Him?  I have seen great men and women of God with incredible gifts and hearts to serve God and when they sin, the church, family and friends discard them as though God is finished with them!  I wonder how God feels about that decision.  Have you ever made a mistake and the people around you wouldn’t let you live it down and you found it difficult to rise above their opinion in order to get back on track?  How wrong is that? It is certainly not of God to judge others and be unforgiving!

I would encourage you today to reach out to someone you know who needs to be shown the love of Christ.  Be a part of their restoration, God’s “Plan B” for their lives, help them to realize that if they turn back to God with their whole heart that He is ready and willing to move forward in their lives!  Don’t let a life that could be used mightily for God be wasted because of the judgment of other people.  If God wasn’t a merciful, gracious God we would all be dead because none of us “deserve” anything from Him, it is because of the blood of Jesus and only because of the blood of Jesus that we are found worthy in God’s eyes!  You can’t do anything to improve on that so any time we think we somehow are better than someone else we are basing that on who WE think we are not on who GOD says we are.  If we have accepted Christ as our Savior then we are covered in His blood so don’t forget where your righteousness comes from.  We aren’t in the position to judge and discard so we need to be careful that we don’t hold hands with Satan keeping someone down that God is trying to raise back up!  Pray today for God to allow you to be a part of bringing someone fully back to Him, be used in a positive way today in someone else’s life, you will be amazed how much it will bless you inside!

Quote:  “If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

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