How to get out of the Hole

 Read 2 Chronicles 28. 

Will Rogers once said, "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!" 

This would have been helpful advice for King Ahaz.  At twenty years of age, he wanted to run his own life.  For some inexplicable reason, he thought he knew how to run his life and lead his nation better than the God who created him and gave him his position.  He not only forsook the LORD but then made his own gods.  He worshiped and sacrificed to pieces of metal that he had fashioned. 

God put increasing pressure upon the king to turn his heart back.  Despite defeat, enormous loss, and humiliation, Ahaz hardened his heart.  "In the time of his distress he became yet more faithless to the LORD" (v.22).  Spiritually, he just kept digging the hole deeper and deeper.  

It is interesting to read that even those in the northern kingdom of Israel, who indeed were far from God themselves, acknowledged their sin and guilt.  Though there is no record of repentance toward the LORD, they at least understood their accountability to Him and treated Judah with kindness and mercy. 

God's intent in disciplining us is to call us to stop going our own way and turn back to Him.  He is gracious and merciful to forgive.  As a wonderful father with his children, He wants a relationship with us. 

"All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD.  But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word." (Isaiah 66:2)