His prayer, and how God
received his entreaty, all his sin and his faithlessness, the sites on which he
built high places and set up the sacred poles£ and the images, before he humbled himself, these are
written in the records of the seers. 2 Chronicles 33:19 (NRSV)
As the 13th king of Judah, Manasseh was one of Israel’s most wicked kings ever.
He was captured by the Assyrians in the seventh century BC and, while
sitting in prison, prayed for God to forgive him.
That he repented and prayed is mentioned in 2
Chronicles 33, but the prayer itself is only recorded in the Apocryphal books
(the records of the seers).
It is a good prayer; I have borrowed it for my own:
In
your great goodness, Lord, you have promised forgiveness to sinners, that they
may repent of their sin and be saved. And
now, O Lord, I bend the knee of my heart, and make my appeal, sure of your
gracious goodness.
I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned, and I know my
wickedness only too well. Therefore I
make this prayer to you: Forgive me,
Lord, forgive me.
Do not let me perish in my sin, nor condemn me to the
depths of the earth. For you, O Lord,
are the God of those who repent, and in me you will show forth your goodness.
Unworthy as I am, you will save me, in accordance with
your great mercy,
and I will praise you without ceasing all the days of my life.
and I will praise you without ceasing all the days of my life.
For all the powers of heaven sing your praises, and yours
is the glory to ages of ages. Amen.[1]
Martin Luther included Manasseh’s
prayer in his Latin translation of the Bible in 1599. I’m not surprised. Before Luther made his break with the
Catholic Church he was a priest who went to confession every day; sometimes
more than once. The story is that he was
overwhelmed by a sense of guilt for past sins that he was not quite able to see
as “forgiven”. At one point the priest
hearing Luther’s confession for the “umpteenth time” responded, “Martin, go
home; go home and get a new sin to confess.”
Today…for you
Do you let God forgive you?
Are you holding on to what
you’ve confessed (perhaps many times)?
Apocryphal prayers, Biblical
prayers, the prayer your pastor gave you, or led you through….and the prayer
you simply let bleed out of your heart….all good!
But, did you believe God
when you were done…as much as you trusted Him when you began? Or is the self-imposed guilt still freezing
you in that place of the unforgiven?
Are
you paralyzed from participating in the last phrases of Manasseh’s prayer?
Unworthy
as I am, you will save me, in accordance with your great mercy,
and I will praise you without ceasing all the days of my life.
and I will praise you without ceasing all the days of my life.
That’s the
part of Manasseh’s prayer I am borrowing today.
It goes along with my favorite line from that great old hymn:
Pardon for sin, and a peace that
endureth[2]
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