In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.
~ Judges 21:25

How interesting it is that this is the verse that concludes the Book of Judges. It aptly summarizes the history of Israel in this period as the nation, without clear leadership and convictions, tumults from strength into weakness, and from conviction into confusion, disarray, and near self-destruction.

As the book ends, the tribes of Israel have just concluded a campaign against a tribe of their own- the Benjamites- because of wickedness and perversion that had settled into their land, and the campaign ended with a near slaughter of that line. God was being confused with ephods and idols. And godless men appeared and disappeared as leaders over the entire nation. Israel, as God’s chosen people, is a mess. And how have they come to this place? Without leadership, each tribe, clan and family did what seemed best for itself.

What a significant insight this verse brings to the individual believer as well. When we accept Christ into our lives as our lord and savior, we invite Him in to be our king. But as so often happens, we forget about the kingship part, and we fall back into the patterns of our former way of life. We return to doing what we see fit for ourselves. And we wonder why “life is not working.”

Part of the spiritual deal of walking with God is that we let him be king over our lives- our hopes, our goals, our possessions, our family, and our resources. We falter in our walk when we forget that if we do not let him be king of our lives, we will take the throne back over automatically, and guided by self, we stand a pretty good chance of gumming up His work in us and hurting ourselves. We forget that our efforts at self-rule have failed us in the past, and that only one King will rule our hearts serving our best interests and delivering us from ourselves, from our “doing as we see fit”.

Jesus knows that when we try to live in lawlessness, unbound from any of the guides and rules of human nature that God made us to live by, we are lost.

Believer, as best as possible, when you see it within yourself, run from an empty throne in your heart and reinstate Him right away as your King.