If you want to read a veritable horror story,…but one that amazingly ends well, read 2 Chronicles 33.
King Manasseh was evil to the bone. He not only led Israel into the sinful excesses of the occult, but he was also so vile that he offered his own children in the fires of human sacrifice to his pagan gods.
In turn, God’s anger burned against him; God had him dragged into Assyrian captivity with hooks in his face. And it was there, praise God, that he repented.
When calculating the odds, no gambling man would have ever bet in favour of Manasseh’s eleventh-hour repentance; he just seemed too far gone. However, as Jesus would say centuries later, “The things that are impossible with people are possible with God” (Luke 18:27).
A preacher told me of his ministry in Aged Care Homes. He said, “It truly is a joy to be with the older folk. But since time is literally against us, it becomes more desperate by the day to bring them to Christ.” It seems the older a person gets, the more set in their ways they can become; the constant prayer of such a ministry is, “Lord, open their hearts today!”
If care is not shown, frustrations can build to the point where certain people can seem irredeemable. Years of pettiness shown towards the church from outside, or moody stagnation from within, can build a strong case that they have a cold and hard heart.
It is at this point that we must seek God’s outlook on the spiritually recalcitrant.
Jesus could see into the heart of the Gadarene Demon (Mark 5:1-20). He saw within this man, beyond all the demons and the terrorising of the local people, a true believer. How many true-believers-to-be have we written off prematurely?
Remember, it’s never too late if there is time to turn to the Lord. It is to that end we work, pray, and never give up!
John Staiger
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