The easy downward spiral

II Kings 21:9b … they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.

As sad as this is, and as hard to have to acknowledge, the fact is that we are not immune to going astray from being what God intends for us to be as His children.  This verse reminds us of that.  While Hezekiah was king and led the Israelites to worship God, they did so.  But his own son Manassah, who became king when his father died, was somehow led astray and he took the majority of the Israelites with him down that road of disobedience and spiritual disloyalty.  Unfortunately, to compound matters, such straying led the Israelites into even deeper sinful ways, so much so that this verse says they became even more evil than those they had destroyed in order to conquer their land.  The downward spiral into sin is so certain and so strong that we must guard against ever getting started in it or caught up in it.  My daily prayer for myself is that I will never become less than diligent to continue to follow God because from this story of the Israelites I see how easily I could fall away from faith even though I have now been walking with God for over 60 years.